A DAY IN CARCASSONNE

I have never spent time in Carcassonne out of choice, I go there to go to the airport, I'm in transit and so I see the out of town shopping centres and the railway station and the bus stop across the canal in front of it. Years ago we did 'do' the historic 'Disneyland' Cite 3 or 4 times. The centre of the 'new' city I remember as being pretty run down from the one time I walked through to kill an hour between bus and train.
So I decided to rectify the situation by arranging an urban sketching meet up in the city centre, rendezvous in the Place Gambetta - this would be a venue were it would be all happening on a Saturday morning, as it is the location for the open air market.

 

A touch of warmth on a chilly day.

 

It did not disappoint. Although by a fluke of good timing we had the extra treat of mini march of a bunch of guys in various forms of quaint costumes, tooting their horns and singing a song. The French love these clubs, organisations, brotherhoods, whatever, love dressing up with a bit of pomp and ceremony (often a bit charmingly shambolic) and I love to see them too.

 

Pity about the man in the boring grey jacket in the middle.

 

We had the Mousquetaires du Razes, the Seigneurs des Corbieres, the Chevailieres du Fitou, a choir and the hunting horn players complete with hunting hound - no photo unfortunately just a sketch -

 

 

Even on a Saturday, most of the commerce in the city centre close up, after all who shops when you can spend an hour (or 2) eating. The streets are quiet and just as the day was beginning to get rather wet I strolled about taking in the architecture, this building was magnificent -

 

 

And another little touch of colour fighting hard against the dull drizzle to brighten my day -

 

 

We finally took refuse in the Musee des Beaux Arts, lovely and warm and dry. It has a small collection of modern art on the ground floors with a few (in my opinion) lovely pieces. upstairs all is very traditional and not so much my cup of tea So I then bade a farewell to this chap, looking very dashing against absolutely sumptuous coloured paintwork, and oh! what a mirror, a glorious dust collector! Devine.

 

 

 Bye, bye Carcassonne. Hello (next weekend) Pezenas, for the next urban sketchcrawl...........