I was very pleased to start my morning with breakfast in the hotel's charming dining room, replete with a sparkly chandelier. I ate the most flavorful butter the I have ever tasted (wrapped in blue gingham from Brittany). The bread was fantastic: crunchy on the outside and soft on the inside, they were opulent pillows of delight on which I could have rested my gustatory hopes forever more...but I'm getting carried away. Let's just say I ate a lot of bread with butter.
I was truly awed by the castle at Carcassonne: extremely well-preserved and very large, it is the most castle-y castle I have ever seen. I truly expected a scaly dragon and a Medieval princess to step out from behind its timeworn walls.
The region is famous for a dish called "cassoulet," which is made from white beans and duck (and sausage, etc.). I was so full from that morning's delicious breakfast that I was not hungry at all, which was extremely upsetting to me: I LOVE duck, and I wanted to enjoy it with gusto. That said, I still ate half of my cassoulet. It was warm, cozy and ducky -- I think I would want to eat this dish every day if I lived in a drafty castle. Mohamed ordered the mussels, which were very tender.
Mohamed asked me if I would like to see Arles, which is famous for its Roman ruins, along our way to Cannes. Of course I said yes! I had no idea that the Romans were here back in the day, so it was an enlightening trip.
I was very happy when we finally reached Cannes, and thrilled to find that our hotel room had a walk-in closet: I had somewhere to hang and dry our wet laundry! (Yes, one downside of traveling for three weeks is that hand-washing is necessary.)
We were again too tired to have a full sit-down dinner, so we stopped by a late-night Chinese "fast food" restaurant. I ordered the veggies -- I was craving cooked vegetables!
