Driving to Ribaute, Carcasonne and quite a lot of wine

17/03 - For some reason I chose to pick up the car at 0800, so we had to call them and inform them that this would very definitely not be the case. After a leisurely breakfast Kelly and I drove to CERN, where I showed her the control room, my office, had a chat with Teresa, and bumped into a few people along the way. While sitting in the cafeteria in building 40 we had an in depth discussion about the nature of electric charge, and what it actually was. Short of repeating the fact that an electron could be thought of as a unit of charge I was unable to explain it, and when Ricardo happened to wander by he did no better, which reassured me.

At about half past one Kelly and I began our drive to Ribaute - the satnav initially reckoned that we would arrive at 2338, but after some fiddling around I managed to set it to not ignore toll roads, and our ETA improved by 5 hours. The route we were taking before we allowed ourselves to use the autoroute was much nicer though, as the drive itself was rather dull. Also we managed to get lost near Lyon and ended up doing a lap of the city, which was pretty unpleasant. In the end we arrived at Kelly's aunt's house around 8pm, which we reasoned was far too late to find any supermarkets to sell us food, so we went to the little shop in the village for tapas-ish (lots of fried things) and a bottle of wine each. By the end of the meal we had been invited to visit a vineyard and maybe go on a tour tomorrow. We took the remainders of our wine back and finished them in front of a roaring log fire. Perfect.

The River Aude from our bedroom window

18/03 - We awoke rather heavy headed after last night, and I struggled up to the shop to buy supplies. We had a breakfast consisting of fruit and the last croissant in the shop on the chilly balcony overlooking the river, before setting off to the local vineyard, Pech-latt. We found it to be closed so we continued to Carcassonne, which was incredibly windy and a bit odd - the second you enter the walled city you are greeted by a huge selection of tacky shops and restaurants, none of which look very tempting. In the end, more out of necessity than choice, we stopped in one and had some traditional French food - a really hot and rather average duck and sausage cassoulet for me, and a sub-par onion soup for Kelly, which tasted like bovril. She did have a glass of Limoux first, which almost made up for it, but pretty disappointing really. We attempted to see the sights for a little longer (I scaled a wall and got a little lost on the castle battlements) before the wind became a little too much and we fled to the shelter of a local Géant hypermarket, where we stocked up on Limoux, cheese, bread and other essentials.

Kelly enjoys Carcassonne

On our way home we stopped off at Chateau Ardolou, where we saw a woman working in a field. I asked her "Le Caveau, c'est ouvert?" to which she replied "Oui, Je suis la", so she went over and opened up. Kelly said she recognised some of the wine from supermarkets back home, but she only had one which we could try. We were a little unsure of the etiquette, and the lady was very friendly - at one point she tried to get her son to come from the house to talk to us, but with no success. Due to our lack of knowledge of protocol I ended up buying two bottles - one 2006, one 2007, for €4.50 each, and she threw in a free bottle of apple juice too,. The wines weren't amazing, but probably a lot better than any I could have found for £4 back home.

Pech-Latt, which was closed. Went to Ardolou instead.

We went to nearby Fabrezan for dinner, where we checked out Le Café du Theatre on the recommendation of a friend of Kelly's aunt. We found it to be pretty unpleasant, just a bar full of men smoking at the bar, not really somewhere I fancied having dinner. We went to Le Grand Café for a drink (somewhere we had been specifically warned against by the same man) and found it to be pretty cool - I mean, there was a dog wandering about the kitchen, along with a baby and a small parakeet who emerged from the coffee pot and flew over and landed on my head for a but, but we were there for a drink not a meal, so it was fine. We went to the pizzeria for a pretty great dinner, then headed back and had some Limoux and a white Rioja I brought from Geneva, curled up in front of a film - the film in question was the cheapest we could find at the Géant, Divine Mais Dangereuse, also known as One Night At McCool's (€3). It was pretty bizarre, but I enjoyed it quite a lot, especially for Michael Douglas's hair.