Table of Contents for this Episode
Categories: Occitanie, Toulouse Area
542 Montpellier to Toulouse with Craig Anderson (April 27)
Introduction and Welcome
[00:00:16] Annie: This is Join Us in France, episode 542.
Bonjour, I’m Annie Sargent, and Join Us in France is the podcast where we take a conversational journey through the beauty, culture, and flavors of France.
Today on the podcast
[00:00:31] Annie: Today, I bring you a conversation with Craig Anderson about an extensive drive through the Southwest of France, from Montpellier to Toulouse.
Discover hidden gems, delightful food tours, UNESCO World Heritage Sites, Cathar castles, and vibrant cities. Craig shares unique experiences, practical travel tips, and insightful observations that will make you want to pack your bags for an adventure in the beautiful region of Languedoc.
Whether you’re planning your first trip or are a seasoned traveler, this episode has something for everyone.
Podcast supporters
[00:01:06] Annie: This podcast is supported by donors and listeners who buy my tours and services, including my itinerary consult service, my GPS self-guided tours of Paris on the VoiceMap app, or take a day trip with me around the Southwest of France in my electric car.
You can browse all of that on my boutique: joinusinfrance.com/boutique. And remember, Patreon supporters get the podcast ad-free and as soon as it’s ready. Click on the link in the show notes to enjoy this Patreon reward for as little as three dollars per month.
The Magazine segment
[00:01:38] Annie: For the magazine part of the podcast, after my chat with Craig today, I’ll discuss the wonderful Bibliothèque Nationale de France François Mitterrand site, which is having a birthday, and tips for buying your Paris metro tickets on your smartphone.
Craig and Pamela Anderson Interview
[00:02:05] Annie: Bonjour Craig and Pamela Anderson and welcome to Join Us in France.
[00:02:09] Craig: Bonjour. Good morning.
[00:02:11] Annie: Wonderful to have you on the podcast.
Trip Overview and Past Travels
[00:02:14] Annie: We’re going to talk about your extensive drive through the Southwest of France, which included Toulouse. I love to hear that. You went to a lot of places. So when did your trip take place?
[00:02:26] Craig: It was late October and early November of this past month.
[00:02:31] Annie: So 2024, very recently.
[00:02:34] Craig: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So we have some, hopefully some very recent updates to what’s going on in some of those places as well.
[00:02:40] Annie: Wonderful. And it was just the two of you?
[00:02:44] Craig: Yes, uh-huh, yeah. My wife and I, we have been trying to hit various regions in France before without spreading ourselves too thin and trying to spend more time in a smaller region and this, the Languedoc region is just a region that we have not gotten to yet and so we really tried to spend time just in that region.
[00:03:01] Annie: So how many trips to France do you think you’ve had all together?
[00:03:04] Craig: Oh, it’s probably easier to think about the regions because we’ve been, before we started doing it region by region, we’d gone there to some of the big highlights here and there, but over the past few years, we tried to make a specific trip to Alsace and the Champagne region one time, we did the Burgundy region, and then cross France to go to the Bordeaux and French Basque Country one time.
We’ve done Paris, we’ve done Normandy, so yeah, I think we’ve hit most of the areas pretty intently. Provence we did in a separate trip as well, so, really this was kind of the last region that we haven’t gotten to is probably the French Riviera. That’s probably the last area that we haven’t, you know, Cannes and Saint Tropez and some of those areas.
We’re kind of saving that one, do it in the right summer season, butthe other places, I think we’ve pretty much hit out at this point.
Still plenty to see though.
[00:03:59] Annie: I bet. Yeah. Well, France is, you know, you can never get to… it doesn’t sound like you went to the Dordogne very much yet.
[00:04:06] Pamela: Well, actually that he left that out. That was my trip that I planned. Most of the time, Craig is the itinerary planner. But the one trip that was mine that I planned from beginning to end was the Loire Valley and the Dordogne. And then ended up in Saint Emilion. So that was my trip. So, yes, we covered all that, too.
[00:04:23] Annie: Wow, you do get around. That’s fantastic. Okay, so on this trip, first of all, tell us how long you were in France for, for this trip.
[00:04:30] Craig: I mean, roughly, we were there, in this part, for about two weeks. So, starting in Montpellier, and then ending up in Toulouse, I think you could do the trip shorter than that if you had to compress it, but we had a few days here and there that we could spread things out a little bit. For instance, in Toulouse, we stayed for five days at the end, but you could certainly make this road trip, you know, in a week or ten days if you needed to.
[00:04:54] Annie: Right. So you weren’t trying to move on every night. Like you stayed in the same hotels for a couple of nights or whatever.
[00:05:01] Craig: Yeah. I mean, we had the luxury on this trip of, it wasn’t that big of an area to cover from Montpellier to Toulouse. And so it didn’t require a lot of, you know, driving for long days.
And so we sort of had the benefit of intentionally stopping and staying a little bit longer in some places, which, you know, certainly, I would recommend if anybody’s got the time to do it. We never really regret hanging out in a city and just sort of, living there a little bit like a local, but if somebody said, well, I don’t have, you know, two weeks to just meander through that, or I’m trying to fit this trip into a bigger trip, I think realistically you could do the Montpellier to Toulouse trip in ten days if you needed to and hit most of the stuff that we saw.
[00:05:42] Annie: Yeah. Yeah. So you went from Montpellier to Saint Guillem le Desert to Sète.
[00:05:49] Craig: Yeah. So the first stop.
[00:05:51] Annie: Let me just read off the, all the names. So you went to Montpellier, Saint Guillem le Desert, Sète, Béziers, Loupian, Carcassonne, Albi, Rabastens, and Toulouse. So here, there’s a few in here that we haven’t talked about very much on the podcast.
So that’s really interesting. So take it from the beginning and tell us what you enjoyed the most.
Exploring Montpellier
[00:06:14] Craig: So the first stop was in Montpellier. That was our first stop, and we stayed right in the middle of the historic core, which is what we always try to do. And the first couple of days that we were there, we did not have a car, so we could just walk to everything and it’s a very compact, beautiful city core, so I’ll let Pam on maybe what are some of the things that you liked about Montpellier in particular.
[00:06:35] Pamela: I think it’s a wonderful, just compact area where it’s so nice when you can just walk everywhere and you kind of, within one day, get the feel for the entire city. Great little shops for the ladies that like to shop.
Yeah.
And beautiful, you know, some Roman things, just very beautiful city, worthwhile having a stop there for sure.
Right.
[00:06:56] Craig: The things that I would say about it that I liked was you get all the normal favorites. French food, French architecture, Arc de Triomphe, I mean, a lot of very pretty buildings that are sort of classic French looking with a very nice large museum that’s there as well.
I mean, the Fabre Museum was a very nice museum. So, you could do all the sort of normal French things that you might like doing, maybe in a less hustle and bustle city. But also the interesting thing to me on, both Toulouse and Montpelier, was because they’re university cities, there was such a feeling of vibrancy.
Sometimes when you go to a place, because a lot of times we’re going off season on purpose to beat the crowds. But sometimes you get to places where it feels a little quiet, because it doesn’t have that tourist life, because that’s the only reason anybody goes to that place. But, these cities, you didn’t get that at all.
There were people, shops, bars, restaurants, everything looked very nice and hip and modern in some ways because of the student population. Of course, there’s a lot of beautiful old buildings and all the history that’s there, but you know, it felt very vibrant because of all the student population that were there and great food choices.
And then the other thing that I thought was interesting about Montpellier that was different from some of the places we’ve been to is because I tried to string along the Camino de Santiago stops, along this, because that’s kind of one of the things that I like doing.
And, you know, so I’d already mapped out all the places that you could go to on the Camino, and I did a few hikes during this trip, like a day hike to just hike part of that, that particular Camino. So that was fun to kind of see some of those things, which you only get if you happen to be on one of those historic cities that happens to be on that path and I kind of plan some of these towns to hit some of those spots.
[00:08:47] Annie: Sure. Yeah. It’s true that Montpellier has a very lovely student city kind of vibe and you were there right at, you know, in the middle of that.I think it makes it more lively. And it has a very big school of medicine.
[00:09:01] Craig: Pretty much we did all of Montpellier in one day.
So we did a walking tour and then we just explored it ourselves.
Wine Tours and Local Experiences
[00:09:09] Craig: And then the second day, we actually had someone that gave wine tours take us out to the area around that area. And that was fun and interesting because it’s just a different area of wines. And he’s the person that took us to the monastery that you mentioned, just to see that, It was a very beautiful monastery. But it was just a chance to get around in the countryside and talk to somebody who could talk about the wine production and took us to a couple of wineries that were very cute because they were very small and you were just sitting there talking with the owner.
And you know they had Roman roads going through their winery or some Roman coins or pottery they had uncovered so just it was kind of interesting because these people are you know very proud and passionate about their vineyard there, and the wines were very good, and that was really fun to just do that for a full day.
[00:09:56] Annie: Right. So, you found a tour guide that you hired through the tourist office or?
[00:10:01] Craig: I just found it on Airbnb Experiences, but they’re pretty easy to find. I mean, if you go into TripAdvisor or Viator or Airbnb Experiences, I mean, I usually do a pretty detailed research list and you can always find somebody that is doing something fun.
And this, it was just the two of us and the gentleman, and it wasn’t that expensive. He took us to his house that he lives in with his parents and his mother made us this wonderful meal in the middle of the day. All with really local fresh foods and bottle of wine.
And so it’s kind of fun. It’s kind of in the countryside at somebody’s house having a fun meal in the midst of everything. So yeah, we enjoyed doing that. That was fun.
[00:10:41] Annie: That’s really different because I do take people on tours, but I don’t bring them home to have a meal, that would be weird.
[00:10:50] Craig: Yeah, that’s not one that we have run across, but on occasion, we’ll run through these trips where they’ll find a friend, or maybe it’s the winery itself, or maybe it’s their place.
We’ve never had a bad experience doing that, I mean, the food’s always wonderful, and it’s always different, and it’s always local things, and it’s just a chance to just sort of hang out with somebody and ask, you know, silly questions about what’s life like in this area, and always get some unusual funny things that you learn.
[00:11:19] Annie: Yeah, so was this a tour in English or in French?
[00:11:23] Craig: Yeah, no, he spoke perfect English, and I think I sent the outline to you on the show notes. I mean, if you want, anybody wants to reach out, I mean, Bernard gave a great tour, he was wonderful.
So much information and, you know, you’re just driving around and somebody just pointing out. Oh yes, this is what this wine production is like now, it used to not be that way and, you know, here’s this little town square and, oh yeah, here’s what this, he took us to another little church that, you know, we would have never found in a million years in the middle of some little small village. It’s always just finding some out of the way fun things to see.
[00:11:54] Annie: Yeah, that’s great. Yes, I’ll include your specific recommendations on the show notes. And I’ll probably do a guest notes, because you did send very good guest notes like you really did your homework. Congratulations, that’s really cool.
[00:12:06] Craig: But yeah, that was kind of our two days in Montpellier, one in the city, one sort of seeing the countryside, and then, I kind of got back early enough that one day where I could walk a part of the Camino, and it’s always easy to do that if you’re interested in that, you can find where the path is and just follow the markers and you can see the Camino shell and where it goes and all the things that leads past. So it’s usually fun to kind of do that, even if you don’t hike it out of the city, if you find some of these cities that it goes through.
It almost always goes through all the highlights that you would imagine that would go through. So you just follow the little markers or the shells right through the middle of the city and, you know, it’s kind of a fun walking path to do, even if you don’t want to, you know, do hardcore hiking.
[00:12:48] Annie: Definitely.
Visiting Sète
[00:12:49] Annie: Wonderful. So you also went to Sète. Did you pick up a car at that point to go to Sète, or did you take the train?
[00:12:56] Craig: Yeah, so after we left Montpellier, we knew we would be more in the countryside, and so we just picked up a rental car right in the middle of the city. It was very easy to do that.
Hopped in the car, and then drove to Sète, which was not a very far drive at all.
So we drove first to the hill that overlooks the town, because I thought, well, that would be a fun way to sort of orient yourself to what it looks like. And that was just a little detour to go up the mountain. And you could see all the city laid out at your feet with the lagoon and all the oyster farms.
And you could see the canal sort of laid out through the city. You could see the Canal du Midi coming through it. So it was a fun way to just sort of, and it just took a little detour. You go up there and park your car and hop out and look at it.
But it kind of was for me orienting, what you knew you were going to see, but you could finally see it for real.
And that was kind of fun to see it. And then we drove right back down to the town, five minutes down the hill back again. And then we just parked right near the market hall. And then just started exploring Sète.
[00:13:57] Annie: Wonderful.
[00:13:58] Craig: The octopus pie that they make there, is a little street food, which was fine, just because it’s something that is, you know, really unique for there. So we went in the market and bought that. I don’t know, maybe by mid-morning everybody was already out, having big platters of oysters, and fresh prawns, and bottles of wine everywhere, and I thought, well, and it was just, I think it was just the middle of the week, it wasn’t anything special, so I thought, well, okay, this is the way to live, if you’re in Sète, you just have your big plate of seafood.
And it was, it’s a small town, so it was very easy to walk along and see the canals and the pretty bridges, figure out what that looked like pretty quickly.
And we ran across a couple of the statues of the guys that have the jousting poles that knock each other off. And I thought, okay, you know, you kind of had to know what that was, but I’ve already done so much research that I knew exactly what that was. And you’re like, Oh, okay. Yeah, that’s kind of fun to imagine them going down these little canals, knocking each other off the sticks in the summer.
It’s like, I’m sure that’s fun to watch.
[00:14:54] Annie: Yeah, it is. It is. I love this stuff. So Pamela, how much time do you think you should dedicate to Sète?
[00:15:01] Pamela: Oh, I would say probably a day. You know, if you got there early, and then, you know, just kind of explored the town, and like you said, went up to the overview. You could certainly spend the night, I’m sure it would be lovely there’s lots of cool things to look at, but I think a day trip is enough.
[00:15:19] Annie: Do you eat, because I also saw that, when I asked you to rank your favorite things, you put eating oysters in the lagoon at Sète as your number one. So do you eat oysters and seafood at home a lot?
[00:15:33] Craig: Seafood, yes, but I mean, we’re not, neither one of us are big raw oyster fans at all.
We may have eaten them a couple of times for some, you know, interesting occasion, kind of like this one was. But I mean, I think if you were through this area in the summer, and you really wanted to do a beachy type vacation, then this would be a fun home base, because we actually drove down to where the sandy spit is outside of the town, it just stopped at a random place and just walked out to the beach. And I was really impressed with how pretty the beach is, I mean it just goes on, and on, and on, it’s very sandy, it’s like pretty waves coming in, it’s not a rocky Mediterranean type of beach, and so we thought, oh, okay, well if you were here prime time in the summer, I’m sure that’d be a great beach to go down to.
But if you’re not doing it during beach season, I think, like Pamela said, probably three or four hours you can kind of see what there is to see in Sète. If you’re just kind of wanting to get a taste of what it is. Because, as you said, I knew because I’d done all the research to find the oyster shacks, and that was a real cool experience right outside of Sète to just find one of these, you know, basically a wharf that’s over the water and they’re bringing the oysters in for, I’m sure, distribution everywhere in France and you just order up your plate of whatever it is you want, then.
Again, we’re not the biggest oyster fans in the world, but they actually were very good here because they were so fresh, and they don’t taste, you know, sort of fishy at all.
[00:17:00] Pamela: They were great. We are from Texas, so we weren’t big oyster eaters before, but now in the Pacific Northwest, we’re getting good oysters, and I have to say the ones in Sète were amazing.
I’ve never seen them that big before in my life, and I loved them, so I’m a convert.
Oh, good!
[00:17:17] Craig: And it was fun because you’re sitting there, looking over the water back towards that. You can see the lagoon, all the people are zipping back and forth in their boats as they’re doing their oyster harvesting.
And then they probably brought Pamela’s favorite dish, which is cooked mussels as well. So we had raw oysters and a big thing of cooked mussels, steamed mussels, with a big garlicky sauce that was really good. And their local white wine, which apparently that’s the wine that you must have if you’re going to have the oysters.
So it was a very, you know, kind of classic Sète experience that, if you were in that region, I think you would definitely go do that because it was fun.
We went to the Tarbouriech Oyster Shack, and there’s a couple of locations on that. We went to the Saint Pierre one in Loupian, but there were two or three on the lagoon, when I was doing the research that you could go to.
And I don’t think you had to make reservations the time of the year that we did it, although we were there in the middle of the afternoon, in the middle of the week, it was maybe a third full, I don’t think we would have had to have reservations, but I would imagine that if you did that during anything that would be more like prime time, I would think, absolutely, you’d probably have to get a reservation to do that because it wasn’t that big of a place and I bet people are like lined up to do that, that know that that’s a thing to do.
[00:18:34] Annie: Yeah. I’ll put the, you were very good, you put the exact names and everything, so I’ll put that in the show notes or in the guest notes so people can find it if they want to.
I haven’t actually done this, which is silly because I go by there, as a matter of fact, I’m gonna go by there again on Monday, but I’m probably not going to stop. That’s the thing, there’s so many places where I could stop, but that was an excellent choice. I’m glad you stopped there.
[00:18:58] Craig: It was just very relaxing and, you know, if you could just sit there and hang out and just look at the pretty ocean almost anytime. So, and it’s right outside of Sète, so it made it very logical to just pop in there and do it.
[00:19:10] Annie: But you do need a car.
Discovering Béziers
[00:19:11] Craig: Yes, yes. But at that point, we had a car because then we were on the way to our next stop, which was Béziers, and so to get to these kind of stops between there and Toulouse, I just think having a car is really helpful.
[00:19:25] Annie: Yeah, I mean, you don’t have to have to have a car, but it’s really helpful. You can do so much more when you have a car.
[00:19:31] Craig: That’s the way, yeah, you can drive to the top of the mountain, you can go to the oyster shack, you can go to all these little strange places, or if you see something, you can just stop and turn off and take a look at it, so it’s so easy to get a car there and it’s relatively inexpensive, we just almost always do it.
[00:19:47] Annie: And it sounds like you enjoyed the old part of the town of Béziers. How, compare the feeling in the, maybe Pamela, tell me the different feeling between Montpellier, Sète, and Béziers as far as the type of city that it is.
[00:20:03] Pamela: Well, Montpellier, like we said, being the university town, seems a little bit more established, bigger, a lot more going on. Sète is definitely a vacation type feel, you know, you’ve got the shops, I mean, real people live there, which is nice. I always like to go places where it seems like it’s not just a fake tourist area, and Sète definitely has a real feel to it, but smaller.
But Béziers was a big surprise. I didn’t really know what to expect and I think they’ve put in a lot of work and money into the infrastructure and plazas and all sorts of things. It’s really, really nice and I really enjoyed it because it’s a smaller city, very easy to get around, some really cool places, lots of nice things to see.
And then of course for me, a market, it was very fun to go antiquing and fully market type stuff, which is one of my favorite things to do. I think it was a really nice surprise. And then we even ended up finding a Michelin recommended restaurant there,
two actually, a Sushi and then, of all things, a Spanish one and neither one French, but it just, it had a lot of offerings.
I think that would be a definite place to stay in overnight, spend a day there and especially if it’s a Market Day, in my opinion, or a day when the churches are open. We did have, that was our one problem, we kept going, the churches were all closed when we were there. A lot of them, not all of them.
[00:21:19] Craig: It was a really pretty, it’s a very compact historical town with a cathedral, kind of perched on the promontory above the river, and then you can do the path that they’ve now built that was very easy, seemed relatively new, that takes you right over the old bridge and then you can look back up over that old bridge. It’s beautiful.
Mm-hmm.
It’s stunning to look back up at Béziers, and all the old architecture that’s there.
So. I thought it was really, really pretty, and it had a bunch of Camino stuff in it, which, that’s not even on this Camino path that I was on, but, you know, like all these little towns, they all connected to it somehow, and so I ran across a bunch of Camino stuff just wandering around, and that was fun.
And like Pamela said, usually I don’t put restaurants on the list because we just tend to kind of find whatever we find wherever we happen to be, but doing research online, the Pica Pica, tapas restaurant is on everybody’s list as, you know, blogs or whatever, and I was a little dubious because sometimes that doesn’t really mean it’s that good, but it was excellent.
It was such a good, and it’s a Michelin starred restaurant, but not crazy priced at all, and they had, you know, a very creative tapas menu, which, like Pamela said, was kind of felt more Spanish than French, but it was excellent. It was really fun and it was right on their main square that apparently they’ve just redone.
So somebody put a lot of money into totally redoing that area because it looks very, very new and beautiful at this point.
Yeah, so we were happily surprised with Béziers, given that we only basically had two nights there, but basically one night, because we got there late, and then we just had one day to explore.
And I think you could see everything in Béziers in one day, if you went out and about, and lots of shops, lots of restaurants, so it was a very fun place to go.
[00:23:03] Pamela: I think it’s worth spending the night places though, that’s kind of our thing, because cities are just different at night, or the restaurant scene or the plaza or whatever.
Day trips are great when you have to, but sometimes it’s kind of nice to be there in the evening. It’s a different vibe.
[00:23:17] Annie: Yeah, I agree.
[00:23:17] Craig: Yeah. What I liked about Béziers too was that it started making you feel like you were getting a little bit into the Cathar area, because you could start, you know, if you were using your imagination, okay, this is where some of these structures used to be or were, I guess that’s the one saying from the US that most people would probably know from the Cathar time of somebody saying kill them all and let God sort them out. I mean, everybody’s probably heard some version of that statement. If you know anything about the Cathar period, but it was kind of interesting that, okay, that’s the place where that took place and that’s the site of that particular thing.
And, you know, being in front of the church where that took place is like, okay, that sort of made it hit home a little bit more where you can say, all right, now you’re kind of starting to get the feel of the architecture and the churches that took place in that period of time.
[00:24:07] Annie: Yeah, so I spent a lot of time in Béziers when I was a child because we spent vacations there. We kind of stopped going when I was maybe 12 or something,
we’ve mentioned it before, in passing in the Cathar episode for definitely because it’s a huge part of the history there. So I’m glad you enjoyed it and that you’re telling us about it because it’s a place we, I don’t think we’ve mentioned it enough and it’s very nice.
[00:24:34] Craig: And it’s kind of logically on the path between, if you’re going either, one way or the other and you’re looking for places to stop as you go, it makes a very logical stop there. And it’d be interesting to know because we were sitting next to a couple of guys that were staying at the hotel that we were at, and they come to Béziers every single year.
That’s where they go every single year and they’re in France. And at least the impression that we got from talking to them is that in the last few years, the town or the district has been putting a lot more money into refurbishing it and making it much more nice and trying to make it more touristy because they said it used to not be that way, like 10 years or so.
[00:25:13] Annie: That’s right.
[00:25:14] Craig: But in the last couple of years, the impression that we got was that they’ve really, you know, spruced it up and made it very nice. So that they could attract tourists there, so it would be interesting to see what your guys’ take was.
[00:25:25] Annie: When I was a kid, Béziers was very blue collar, you didn’t go there to admire the scenery.
It had a lot of history, it has a lot of historical buildings, but they weren’t maintained to the standard that were, that, for example, Narbonne, which is very close, and you didn’t stop at Narbonne. Most people, I think most visitors would stop at Narbonne and not Béziers. So it’s interesting that you picked Béziers over Narbonne.
It sounds like it was a good decision for you.
[00:25:54] Craig: I was torn between that since I’m the planner to try to pick where we’re going. And the only reason I didn’t pick Narbonne is because the prior trip that Pamela was mentioning, we had stayed in some of the years in Provence and Orange and some of the things.
We’d seen some of the big Roman sites there, and so I thought, well, we’ve seen that side of it, and so I kind of wanted to go to Béziers because it was more, you know, medieval Cathar feeling, at least from what I could see from looking online, it would kind of have been that flair. And I’m glad we picked it, because it was really interesting to go there.
[00:26:28] Annie: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Sounds wonderful. (Mid-roll ad spot)
Okay, where to next?
Journey to Carcassonne and Cathar Castles
[00:26:35] Craig: So then we got up the next day, and that was our journey that we were going to go to Carcassonne by the end of the day. But on the way, because as you mentioned before, we had a car, that gave us some opportunity to kind of explore. So the first thing that we went to was Lastours, the Cathar castles up there.
And you definitely have to have a car to get up to where that is, but that was a really pretty sight.
Again, it was sort of like driving up to see Sète, it’s just an easy drive, you pop up to the front gate, you make a very short path, and there’s a couple of viewpoints that you can overlook, you know, the ruined Cathar castles, sort of on the other side of a small valley, but, I mean, just incredibly picturesque, very, very beautiful, you can see the castle still standing.
If I would have had more time, I would definitely have loved to go do the hike, go all the way up to the castles, but that’s probably adding a couple of hours to go do that. But if anybody’s there and has more time and interest, I would definitely suggest just do the hike to go to the castles and you can walk right up to them.
But even if you don’t have that time, you can just hop in, take a look at it, you know, very, very picturesque. Nobody was there. You had it all to yourself. So you kind of felt like you’re in this abandoned valley with abandoned castles, all the mystery that goes along with that, but this definitely was a place to stop.
[00:27:51] Annie: Yeah, so if you go on a weekend, or, there’s families going up, you know, hiking up to the castles. But if you don’t go on a weekend, when I went with my friend Brenda, I think we were pretty much the only ones there. It’s very scenic. Yeah, it is scenic and it’s not a difficult hike.
Like even, I mean, we did go up to all the way, I mean, I’m not a super fit person, but I could do it.
[00:28:15] Craig: Well, that was our only chance to really see, you know, the Cathar piece of history out where you would think it would have looked like, you know, as opposed to seeing it inside Béziers or some of the other cities.
This one really made you feel like, okay, here’s this small valley that’s sort of isolated and fortified and here’s some towers and, you know, I get it. That’s why they were back there last line of defense. So it was an interesting kind of experience to see it that way versus, you know, some of the bigger cities.
Yep. Yep. Definitely. And since we had a car and we were in that area, we went ahead because there’s a lot of wineries around there. So that day we went to more of a chateau type style winery. So that was kind of fun because that was different than the wineries we had been to around Montpellier, which were small, family owned.
This was more of the château style with big formal gardens and fancy grounds and a nice restaurant that was attached to it. So we did a French food and wine pairing. So that was, that’s probably one more of Pamela’s favorite things is you get, you know, all the French courses of food.
[00:29:17] Pamela: Yes, I love the, love the winery, the restaurant was amazing and you really got some really good food, which is what I’m into France for.
[00:29:24] Annie: Yes, so what was the name of that winery? I’m not finding it, I’m sure you listed it, but…
[00:29:30] Craig: That one is the Chateau Pinotier.
[00:29:33] Annie: Oh, Pinotier, yes. Oh yes, I’ve recommended it to people, actually.
I think I went years ago, but… so what was that like?
Exploring a Quaint Village and Its Restaurant
[00:29:40] Pamela: It was really nice, it’s obviously I guess a home or maybe some of the family lived there or possibly we couldn’t really, I mean, we walked around the grounds, which are open, which was really nice, and I thought that was kind of cool the way they, you know, you could tell some people were locals and they were just coming into the grounds, some kids running around, looking at the gardens and playing. So I guess when the gate is open, you can just kind of come in and look around, which was nice and some nice gardens and a beautiful house.
And then a little chapel that was very interesting. Lots of history, obviously been in the family for a long, long time. Then you just walk across this little bridge and you go to the restaurant, which is a very nice, newer looking set up, very modern. Wonderful wines and food and service and, you know, lots of green area.
It was very nice. The little village was one of those quintessential little, you know, you drive through, there’s basically one road, it’s one way. If you missed your turn, you have to go back around and get to where you need to be, but it was very, very lovely, worth the stop for sure.
Wonderful. That’s cool.
[00:30:39] Craig: And it was a fairly busy restaurant because, again, we might have been the only tourist there. If I was going to guess, that’s what I would guess, maybe there might have been ten tables in there with a very nice set menu of very nice French foods. And you know, with the wine pairings that go along with it.
The Somme would come over and sort of describe each one. But as far as I could tell, everybody else that was there were just having regular business lunches on a Tuesday or whatever it was, having same food and same wines that we had, business as usual in the little small town of, you know, let’s have multi course meal and wine.
[00:31:12] Annie: That’s right, why not? If you have a visitor, or you host the meeting at work or something, you definitely take them out to a nice place. Of course. Wonderful. Okay.
Visiting Carcassonne: Tips and Experiences
[00:31:24] Annie: And then you went to Carcassonne, right?
[00:31:26] Craig: Yeah, so our plan on Carcassonne was based on, you know, a lot of advice that I’d found. The advice was get there at the end of the day and stay overnight versus get there in the morning and be there with the tourists and leave, which was perfect advice.
I mean, it was similar advice that we had gotten when we visited Mont Saint Michel years ago. Very similar kind of experience where, you know, and it, we kind of lucked out, probably dumb luck, because by the time we got there, and we stayed in a hotel that would allow you to stay within the walls. So there are the two hotels that you can do that with, one is the La Cite, which is very, very expensive. And the other one is the Best Western Donjon Hotel, which is what we stayed in, which I would recommend for one night. It was perfect.
And so by the time you kind of park your car close and walk in, we just headed to the ramparts, the museum first, and luckily, we got there just as they were saying, Well, you know, I don’t think you’re going to have time to walk the ramparts and do the museum and castle.
And we said, well, we’re going to try it anyway, and they now have the ramparts open. I think this year is the first year that they’ve now got the entire ramparts all the way around that you can walk.
But apparently, that hasn’t been the case for a long, long time. And again, we lucked out because basically everybody had gone and the lady that was running it was essentially walking behind us the whole way, shutting the doors and shutting the towers as we were walking around.
And she said, no rush, you know, just take your time, but you’re the last ones coming. And so there was literally nobody on the ramparts and you could take your time meandering around. And when we exited, they just shut that door behind us. And so it worked out perfectly to do that. At the end of the day, you know, fewer tourists, the better.
And then once we were done with that, the tourists had kind of made their way out of the town itself. And so then we could just spend all the rest of the time just wandering around and looking at all the sites with much less tourists. So that I think was nice.
[00:33:21] Annie: Yeah. If you’re going to do something like that, I would recommend that you arrive in Carcassonne around 3PM or something, especially in the winter months, they close earlier. In the summer months, they will close later. But in the winter months, get there by three, perhaps four, but that’s kind of pushing it, and then visit, go straight to the Chateau Contal, visit that, do the walk around the ramparts and then you can look around the little shops will probably stay open till 7 or something.
[00:33:49] Craig: And we were very much there I think probably off season and so I kind of wondered you know, how many shops and restaurants would be open but there were an abundance of those open at night so there was no problem at all finding a place to eat and shop. Yeah, I think seeing the ambiance from the night and then kind of walking back outside the gate, I did that after we had dinner, I kind of did another little stroll and looked at it all lit up at night, and it’s very pretty at night.
[00:34:13] Annie: It is very nice, yeah. And if you walk out, they don’t actually lock down the city, it’s not medieval times anymore. People ask me this about the Mont Saint Michel as well, like, am I going to be able to walk in the city or they close down? No, they don’t. The shops might be closed, but you can still walk around the old city. But if you go down to the old bridge and look at the city from the old bridge, it’s really pretty.
[00:34:42] Craig: Yeah, I did that the next morning, because I did exactly what you were suggesting. I kind of wanted to do the walk, and it’s not a long walk, but it’s a very different view to see it up on the hill.
[00:34:52] Annie: Yeah.
[00:34:53] Craig: And walking across the old bridge, the views going back on the city is really, really pretty.
[00:34:57] Annie: Yeah, it is.
It is. And if you do that at night, you get the lit up chateau as well. I’ve done it both time, both ways. It’s worth doing. Some parts you have to go uphill quite a bit, but it’s not forever. It’s not like a super strenuous again. It’s doable.
[00:35:12] Craig: Well, we needed to do a walk to walk off our cassoulet that we ate there.
So, you know, it’s a very hearty food, so we probably needed to walk a little bit, to walk on.
[00:35:22] Annie: That’s fantastic. So do you recommend Carcassonne? People say, Oh, is it too touristy? Is it worth going?
[00:35:30] Craig: Yeah, I definitely would recommend going because again, if you’re trying to kind of string out a logical, you know, point A to point B, sort of a tour there.
I mean, it’s a very logical place to stop.
[00:35:41] Annie: Yeah.
[00:35:42] Craig: But I don’t, honestly, I don’t know what you would do there if you had more than sort of one evening in the next day, at least for us.
[00:35:49] Annie: Agreed.
[00:35:50] Craig: I think it would be fine to stop there. It’s really pretty, but I think you can do it in basically half a day, you know, and then get on to what your next stop is.
[00:35:58] Pamela: Definitely. I think Americans would definitely feel like it’s a bit Disney world, but it’s like, this is real. I mean, I think that’s the fun part for us is like with the little shops. When you think about history, they had little shops there too, they were just selling real things, not little plastic swords.
So, it is touristy, but in a way you get that feel of a bustling medieval castle in a way, but I think it’s definitely worth it if some people might think it’s a little touristy, but it’s, I think it’s definitely worth a stop.
[00:36:24] Annie: Yeah, and if you, I mean, the more you know about the Middle Ages, the more you can think about what was actually happening long ago, the sort of things that were happening long ago. And you’re totally right. People were there selling their stuff, and that little street right into the town is perfect.
Hey, come get my… come buy my stuff. So yeah.
[00:36:46] Craig: And I didn’t know about the series that Kate Moss did about Carcassonne. I had not run across that series.
[00:36:54] Annie: The book, yeah.
[00:36:55] Craig: And there’s a series of books that I guess were really, really popular and they made a movie about it. And so I at least read the first one and it was fun to kind of, you know, walk around.
And she did a really good job in her books of making it very, very local to Carcassonne. Describing in detail some of the places, and if you like those books, or are interested in going there, maybe it’s worth reading the book in advance. It’s kind of fun to kind of have that fictionalized account, but set in a real place.
[00:37:21] Annie: Very fictionalized, but very, very fun to read. Yes, it’s a good read. And there’s also a game named Carcassonne that is interesting, but has not much to do with the city.
[00:37:32] Pamela: We have that game. That’s what was kind of funny when we told our son. We’re going to Carcassonne. He’s like, oh, what? Like the game? So yes, we have that one.
[00:37:39] Annie: It’s a good game. It just takes a long time to play, which is why we haven’t played it in a while. But otherwise, it’s a fun game. Wonderful.
Albi
[00:37:48] Annie: What came after Carcassonne then? I assume Toulouse.
[00:37:52] Craig: So while we had the car, that was the day that we drove up to Albi.
[00:37:55] Annie: Ah.
[00:37:56] Craig: So on the way we headed up to Albi first.
And knowing at the end of the day, we were going to turn in the car, so that was the last chance that we had to kind of do everything in the countryside. But Albi was beautiful. So we drove up there, stopped, you know, the cathedral is amazing, you know, it’s beautiful. I’m not really sure I can probably do it justice describing it, but I mean, it’s really, really beautiful, impressive.
The murals on the back with the Last Judgment it was completely amazing to see, it’s such a distinctive looking building from the outside where you think, yeah, I think anybody that, you know, wasn’t getting with the king and the pope probably thought, this is a little imposing, so we better adopt the program, so it’s interesting to see.
[00:38:39] Pamela: I think that it’s worth going to because it’s just so different than any… you know, you have cathedrals all over France, and they have a certain look, and they’re beautiful, but this one is just so different. So I think it is definitely worth a stop.
[00:38:53] Annie: Mm hmm. Mm hmm. Did you go into the Toulouse Lautrec Museum?
[00:38:57] Craig: No, because we somehow didn’t have our timing exactly right, so we should have done that first, but instead we walked up to the cathedral first, and then once we started looking at it, then we kind of got carried away with looking at it and looking at it, and there’s so much to look at, and then when we finally came out, it was lunchtime, and we thought, well, should we get lunch?
But then Pamela volunteered to go over to where the museum was, only to find out that that’s when it was closed. It had like, just closed, and so we thought, well, I guess let’s just get lunch here, which we did right in the shadow of the cathedral. So it was beautiful. It was a beautiful sunny day, just looking up at it the whole time.
And then we thought, well, we either need to sit around for an hour or we need to get on to Toulouse and there’s a lot of stuff to see there. So we missed the museum, just because we didn’t, we should have seen it first and then done it in the reverse order, but that’s not how we did it.
[00:39:47] Annie: Yeah, yeah, sometimes, yeah, timing matters.
I suppose you could have walked to the little garden behind the museum. I think that stays open.
[00:39:56] Craig: Yeah, I mean, so that’s really how we ended up stopping at Rabastens because that’s, we kind of had a little bit of extra time, and that was literally on the way, and otherwise, Pamela would have said, why are we stopping at this strange Camino stop as well?
[00:40:10] Annie: Yes, Rabastens, I got to say, you’re the first ones who have stopped there. So why?
[00:40:17] Craig: Well, I found it, because usually when I do my, very intensive research of every place that we are going, I also always do a check on the UNESCO World Heritage Map. So I always go and dig in, and they’ve got a very good interactive map that you can find any place in the region.
And I, I don’t think I’ve ever been to a UNESCO place that wasn’t worth stopping, and given that it was literally right on the road, it was a five minute detour off the main road, we just pulled over and saw it. And I thought it was amazing because it’s kind of like a lot of things that we like probably by going to Europe and seeing it is incredibly complicated and ornate, in a small town where all the doors are open, there’s not a single soul guarding the place, which is not the way it would be in the US. It’s probably been that way for hundreds of years, nobody messes with anything, and you just walk in and see this thing that’s been there for so long, and you’re just amazed that it’s still there.
It was a fun 30 minute stop to go.
[00:41:18] Annie: Very good. Yeah. Excellent. And then you went to Rodez as well?
[00:41:23] Craig: No, after that, we, that was when we drove back to the airport, dropped off our car, and then that’s when the last stop in Toulouse started.
[00:41:33] Annie: Okay, because Rodez would have been out of the way quite a bit.
Okay, okay. Yes. All right.
Arriving in Toulouse and Exploring Capitol Square
[00:41:38] Annie: So then you drop off the car at the airport and you make your way into Toulouse, you took the bus or something or train or I mean, or taxi?
[00:41:46] Craig: We came back in an Uber because that was relatively easy and cheap to get around in Toulouse, and Pamela had found us an Airbnb right on Capitol Square.
So we were right in the heart of it. And the day that we came in, I think it was Halloween, I didn’t quite realize how busy Capitol Square was going to be, but when you’re getting there at night, and it’s Halloween, it was a lot of people out there.
[00:42:13] Annie: Yeah, there’s usually lots of people. If the weather is good, there’s always people congregating or there’s always some sort of event or something.
Did they have like a stage and things going on on the stage or no?
[00:42:24] Craig: They didn’t have a stage the time that we were there, but I think because we were literally right on Capitol Square, I mean, we were tucked just right around the, if you’re facing City Hall, we were just right around the left side of it.
So we literally walked the Capitol Square every single day, multiple times a day. And there was always something going on.
[00:42:41] Annie: Yeah.
[00:42:42] Craig: But it seemed like, or just a lot of people out, out and about, but it was fun to kind of be there in the heart of the city to be located because everything was so easy to walk in.
[00:42:50] Annie: I definitely recommend city centers if you can afford it. Like, it might be a few euros more, but really it makes it better.
[00:42:58] Pamela: I think you make up for the lost time. You’re a little cheaper to stay out, like you say, but the amount of time you have to spend walking to get into the city center, or an Uber or what have you, it kind of, it’s a wash, really, because it’s just so nice to be able to pop out and go see something like that, the capital, I guess, the government building. It’s open, but then there’s a door and then it closes and it’s like, there’s beautiful artwork inside there and we knew that, but it’s like, we would walk by and the door would be closed again and then we’d walk by and so fine, the first day it was open, but we thought, oh, we’ll do that later.
And then it took us forever. So it was very nice that you’re right there and you can just, oh, okay. It’s closed. Oh, okay, it’s open. You know, kind of nice to be right there where everything is.
[00:43:39] Annie: Yeah. That one’s an official building. So they close it a lot throughout the day and you never know why it’s like, Oh, okay.
Now they must have a signing, or a event, or press conference, or a wedding or…
[00:43:54] Craig: Well, we moved because Elyse told us, make sure you go inside that and see it. And like Pamela said, if we would not have been on Capital Square, I don’t know that we would’ve made it into that because the times it was open was so sporadic, but it was worth it.
It was completely amazing the artwork that they had inside. I mean, we saw it literally the last day and I’m like, I’m so glad we made it into this because it’s amazing amount of art inside that.
Food Tour and Private Tour with Elyse in Toulouse
[00:44:19] Annie: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. So you took a private tour with Elyse. How was that?
[00:44:23] Craig: We did, yeah, so the first day that we were there, after we turned in the car, so the next day, we always like to try to do some kind of an orientation to the city.
And so, the morning, we did the Victor Hugo market tour, so that was, you know, seeing the market, and it was a food tour, but it was very fun, it was a tour that was done in a way that I had not gone on a food tour before, so we went into the market, with a small group tour and went to all the stalls that she recommended and essentially made a picnic basket and then came out of the market and then went to a wine shop and then basically had what we found at the market and sort of had a little picnic.
That was a lot of fun and a fun way to do it.
[00:45:01] Annie: Nice.
[00:45:02] Craig: And it was a good way to have lunch too at the same time.
What company did you do the tour? Oh, it was Jessica. I know her. Okay. Very nice. Yeah. She’s great.
Yeah. It was a lot of fun. And, you know, all the places that we went to were very unique and, you know, describing the unique Toulouse sausage and the unique Toulouse cheeses and the unique wines.
I mean, that was a great way to do that.
[00:45:24] Annie: So she has a company called Taste of Toulouse and you can find her at tasteoftoulouse.com. I know her, I’ve known her for years and I’ve intended to have her on the podcast for a long time. Too many people on the podcast, I don’t know.
[00:45:38] Craig: Well, I would highly recommend them because the food tour was excellent.
And like I said, it was fun because they did it in kind of a market way that’s sort of different than the typical, you know, stop at 10 different shops and have a little tidbit, which are fun too. But, this was a good way to see the market and all the things that they had there locally. And so once we were full, then we met up with Elyse that day.
[00:45:59] Pamela: Well, I’ll add one thing. We went to a cheese shop. Is it, Xavier? Xavier? Yes. It was amazing. That’s the good one. So there were a few stalls outside of the market, and that was the highlight of the food tour for me.
[00:46:14] Craig: I liked it because they had the… the cheese expert that had the collar and he happened to be there.
That was there, the father was there. So the, the Godfather of Cheese, I guess, was there that day.
[00:46:26] Annie: The Godfather of Cheese!
[00:46:28] Craig: With his official collar that signified, you know, that level of expertise of cheese. And he was showing us around some of the cheeses. So that was fun.
[00:46:36] Annie: That’s wonderful.
[00:46:38] Craig: Then we were all full and ready to go.
Toulouse Tour with Elyse
[00:46:40] Craig: And then, we met up with Elyse and, hopefully we had a good time for her as well because, you know, what was a two and a half hour tour? I think four and a half hours later, we finally ended up at the bridge and it was excellent, you know, and we were happy for every minute that she was giving us the tour.
But that’s always a great way to start any tour of some kind of an orientation to the city and the history and, you know, the lay of the land, and so we got to see a lot on that walking tour, so that was great.
[00:47:08] Annie: Yeah, and if perchance she’s not available in person, she also has a VoiceMap tour, but she likes doing the in person stuff a lot, so that’s… that’s great.
[00:47:17] Craig: Yeah, Elyse was great, a lot of fun, I mean, so much information and history, and at least for us as Americans, it’s sometimes fun to have somebody that’s lives in another country, but just happened to be from America, because a lot of the questions that you have, they’re like, yep, I thought the same thing, or something that you’re probably thinking about because you’re from America, but this is a different way that we do it here.
And so it was fun to have it that way.
[00:47:41] Annie: It is true, just today I was listening to a podcast about Spain, Travel to Spain, and it was two Spanish guys talking. And I thought, this could almost be Join Us in France, but for Spain, because people ask me all the time, is there a similar thing for Italy or Spain or whatever?
And I, it really wasn’t because they hadn’t lived in the US, so they didn’t know, they weren’t aware of the things that Americans would want to know about. They were just telling you, they were just two Spanish guys who spoke good English, really good English. But it was a little too Spanish I thought.
See that’s the thing, you have to be, I mean it’s good if you’re local, but it’s also good if you have the perspective as well.
[00:48:28] Craig: Yes, I think the food tour and the walking tours are always fun to do.
Toulouse Gourmet Tours
[00:48:32] Craig: And there’s one more that I would mention in Toulouse, because I’ve never gone on a food tour like this either, but a couple of days later, we went on a food tour called Toulouse Gourmet Tours.
And this is a gentleman, and he’s got a website, so if you just Google Toulouse Gourmet Tours, but he is a chef who is now in Toulouse, and he has a bicycle with a big cargo box in the back, and he goes around Toulouse and makes on site little tapas type dishes that are extraordinarily good, and each one sort of has a history or a tie in to what it is you’re looking at.
So you’ll be in front of Saint Sernin or the Capitol Square or something like that and he’ll whip up this dish and everybody around is looking at you thinking, how do I get on this tour? He’s making this very nice little dish and then he’s got a very interesting set of, you know, stories about what went on in that place.
And they’re all a little bit off the beaten path stories, so they weren’t like, you know, here’s this cathedral and it was built by this guy, you probably could have known that just by looking at. All of the stories were some obscure, but very interesting story about here’s what happened here and here’s what it has to do with, you know, chocolatine or something like that.
And you’re like, okay, well, that’s very interesting.
But that was a lot of fun to do that. I’ve never been on one that sort of blended intense history with very interesting dishes at the same time.
[00:50:01] Annie: Sounds wonderful. So, we have to stop talking. We’ve been talking a long time.
Future Travel Plans and Reflections on France
[00:50:06] Annie: But, I would like to know, when’s your next trip to France?
Or are you ready to move on to a different country, I guess?
[00:50:13] Craig: Well, we don’t have one in the hopper on the agenda next. You know, but definitely in Toulouse, we really enjoyed that a lot, and there’s so much to see there. Wonderful city. Yeah, I mean, so we had four full days essentially there. And you could have spent longer because there’s just so much to see there.
But it’s a big, vibrant city with tons to see. Now we’ll have to be trying to figure out the next place to go to in France, I guess.
[00:50:40] Pamela: I think it would be fun to go to the south of France, you know, where Saint Tropez, all that part, we’ve never been to that part, and I kind of, maybe our 60th birthday party will be, you know, like going to France for that.
[00:50:52] Annie: That would be fun. It’s very different. It’s very built up. It’s very densely built. So it’s not the same feeling at all as the rest of France. I mean, the Riviera, they really put cement everywhere.
[00:51:08] Pamela: We haven’t been there because we really don’t, that’s not usually our style, we love history, we love going to the various regions and seeing real people, so it’s one of those things you have to go see it, but it’s… it’s not our usual vacation, which is I think why we’ve kind of put it off.
[00:51:22] Annie: Oh, it’s wonderful. Don’t get me wrong. It is wonderful, but it doesn’t feel like southwest of France. Southeast and Southwest are very different. Very different.
[00:51:32] Craig: Yeah. We’ve a lot of times that we’ve gone to France, as I mentioned, we ended up doing it on the not prime time, partly because that’s just when our schedule allows, but also on purpose to try to avoid the crowds and the heat, because we’ve gone enough places where we’re just kind of done with crowds and heat at this point, if you don’t have to do that.
So we’ve ended up going to a lot of places in France. Either the March April time frame, which maybe isn’t the optimal one, but it ended up being great times to go see a lot of places in France. And we’ve also tried France several times in the October to November time period, like this trip that we just did, or the year before we were in Alsace and Champagne in the same region, sort of the same time period, the end of October, beginning of November.
And normally you might think, like, well, that doesn’t sound like the best time to go, but honestly, there’s a lot of places in France, especially if you can include a big city like Toulouse or Lyon.
[00:52:28] Pamela: Lyon was amazing.
[00:52:30] Craig: Yeah, like just cities there’s always something going on. There’s always something fun to do.
And so even if you have a bad weather day, you know, I would encourage people to think about some of those areas in France, if you’ve got sort of an off season trip that you want to take, because there’s always something going on in some of those places, and it’s enjoyable almost any time of the year. So we’ve had really good success in the October, November, and the March, April, seeing a lot of those places in France.
[00:52:56] Annie: Wonderful. Well, Craig and Pamela, thank you so much for talking to me. You have been wonderful to talk to. I wish you many more great trips to France and, who knows, maybe I’ll see you in Toulouse someday.
[00:53:10] Craig: That’s right. Well, we’ll look forward to the next podcast to give us some new ideas of places to go.
That’s right.
[00:53:15] Annie: Okay. Merci beaucoup. Merci. Thank you. Au revoir.
Thank you Patrons!
[00:53:28] Annie: Again, I want to thank my patrons for giving back and supporting the show. Patrons get several exclusive rewards for doing that, you can see them at patreon.com/joinus.
And a special shout out this week to my new Join Us in France champions: Chandra, who became a groupie du podcast at the yearly level. And thank you, Colleen Butera and Ellen Connard for editing your pledges up.
Would you join them too? You can do it for as little as $3 a month, but if you can afford it, I would love to have you pledge more so you can have access to more of the rewards.
And to support Elyse, go to patreon.com/ElysArt.
This week I published a reward called "Easter and the Crown of Thorns at Notre Dame" for the higher level patrons, where I explain where you can see the relic and about the knights who guard it. Yes, knights.
Tour Reviews
[00:54:28] Annie: Some people left reviews of my VoiceMap tours this week about the Saint Germain des Prés tour.
I have enjoyed this tour twice. I often get turned around and I think it’s my problem and not the tours.
Well, who knows? The tour is tested pretty thoroughly. I just keep my phone open and look for street signs. It’s very easy to get turned around in a city you don’t know. Honestly, don’t be too hard on yourself.
About my Marais tour, Excellent tour of the Marais. I enjoyed learning a bit about its history and that it pointed out both well known and unique stops along the way. I enjoyed seeing the Victor Hugo and Carnavalet museums too.
Yes, those are wonderful.
About my Ile de la Cité tour, I enjoyed this tour immensely, particularly the descriptions of the front of Notre Dame. I could not follow it in order to my ticket times, but it was really easy to adapt the tour to my route.
Yeah, you can do that. It’s not super easy. With the new Gothic Paris tour, you can easily do it in any order you want. But the others, it’s not, you know, it’s not ideal.
About my Montmartre tour, We did this tour in 2022 and I absolutely loved it.The area can be quite crowded at times and this tour allowed us to appreciate the less crowded parts and see past the tourists. If you’re not using a walking tour you’re missing out. This is the best way to explore at your own pace and learn about the neighborhood.
About my Gothic Paris Tour, I want more reviews of that one because it’s brand new and it doesn’t have very many. But this person was very sweet and said, I just enjoyed listening to Annie’s latest Paris walking tour. This one about Paris’s gothic jewels, I listened to it at home in the hopes of returning to Paris soon.
Yes, you can do that with my VoiceMap tours.
Like all of Annie’s tours, it is well done with interesting historical information, lovely photography, and enough practical information so that the route is easy to follow.
I’ve been to these three sites several times, but I still enjoyed Annie’s tours and descriptions. I was especially glad to hear all of the details about Notre Dame’s lovely doors and the Sainte Chapelle statue of Mary, which is often overlooked. I highly recommend this tour.
Thank you so much, whoever you are.
Please write more reviews of my Paris’s Gothic Jewel tour, because it’s new and it needs a lot of reviews before people will feel comfortable buying it.
Podcast listeners get a big discount for buying these tours from my website. It’s best for me as well, because I get to keep more of what you pay instead of giving it to Apple or Google.
But if you buy from my boutique, it’s a manual process, so don’t expect it to be instant. Like it would be if you were buying directly from the app, but I know most of you listening to this podcast, plan your trips in advance and we have time to do this. You’re probably not in a rush.
To use your codes, open VoiceMap, bottom right it says Tour Codes. Tap on it, enter the codes, download the tour. And this is a digital product that you own forever. Even if you change phones, for example, log in to your VoiceMap account, and you can download all the tours on your own again.
Think of these tours like walking around Paris with your French friend. A friend who loves history, architecture, and art, and can’t wait to share it with you. Take me in your pocket with my VoiceMap tours.
If you’re planning a trip to France and you need personalized advice, hire me as your itinerary consultant.
It’s a busy time for these consults. So book your spot early by going to joinusinfrance.com/boutique.
The François Mitterrand site of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France – BNF
[00:58:14] Annie: All right. Let’s talk about The François Mitterrand site of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, it’s also known as the BNF. There is one not too far from the Louvre, that’s the BNF Richelieu that we did a whole podcast episode about, but this one is the François Mitterrand.
It’s a little further from the center, but it’s a very interesting site. And it just turned 30 years old. It officially opened on March 30th, 1995. It has since become a symbol of French cultural ambition. You’ve probably seen photos of the four massive glass towers shaped like open books.
That’s the BNF in the 13th arrondissement in the Tolbiac neighborhood.
Today, the BNF is ranked among the five largest public libraries in the world. It holds over 16 million documents, including printed works dating back from the 16th century to today. That includes rare books, of course, that need constant care and preservation, an enormous task carried out by a dedicated staff of over 2,200 people, from conservators to restorers to librarians and archivists.
But the BNF is not just about dusty old books. Did you know that it also collects video games and costumes from theater productions? That’s part of its mission to preserve French cultural output in all its forms.
And thanks to France’s legal deposit system, every single book, newspaper, and magazine published in the country is archived there.
Not podcasts, however. So you’re going to have to, you’re going to have to keep downloading your own podcasts. That adds up to 192 daily papers, 850 weekly publications, and about 80,000 new books every year. We produce a lot of things in France.
The library is still going strong. In fact, in 2024, it set an attendance, a new attendance record. Since opening its doors, the François Mitterrand site has welcomed more than 23 million visitors.
Back in 1995, President François Mitterrand called the library a completely new kind of monument. He said, the library is like a tree that draws its strength from its roots and rises towards the sky. 30 years on, that bold architectural vision still feels fresh and the BNF remains a pillar of France’s cultural life.
I think it’s a lovely place. And for people who’ve been to Paris, perhaps many times, or perhaps if you are in the 13th arrondissement, it’s definitely worth a stop to take a look around. They have permanent exhibits, they have temporary exhibits, they have all sorts of things going on. All public libraries do in France.
And that one is a particularly good one.
Buy your Metro Tickets on your Smartphone
[01:01:07] Annie: If you’re visiting Paris or anywhere in the Ile de France region soon, here’s a tip that can really save you time and hassle. Yes, you can now buy your Metro, bus, tram, and RER tickets directly on your smartphone. It’s not totally new, but it’s getting better all the time to where I feel comfortable recommending it.
You don’t need to stand in long lines at the ticket machines just to grab that one ride that you need. All standard tickets are available via the app, the only exception is the annual Navigo pass, but that’s usually for people who live in Paris. That still requires a physical card for now. So to get started, you have a couple of easy options.
You can use IDF Mobilité, Bonjour RATP or SNCF Connect. With SNCF Connect, you can also add your tickets to your Apple Watch.
These apps are reliable, user friendly, and they work across the entire public transportation network in the Paris region. And I was surprised that SNCF Connect, you can load tickets for the Metro, but you can, I tried it. It works. It’s new.
New Prices as of January 2025
[01:02:17] Annie: As of January 2025 there’s also the new prices. You can buy a single ride ticket for 2.50 for the Metro and the RER. Or 2 Euros for bus and tram, and it’s valid across the whole Ile de France system. And Ile de France is the Paris region. It includes Paris proper, but also several departments around Paris.
Navigo Easy Card
[01:02:40] Annie: If you prefer something physical, but still convenient, and I end up recommending this to a lot of people still, when I do itinerary consults, you can get the Navigo Easy card. It costs just three euros and you get the physical card and you can load it with tickets or day passes.
It’s perfect for short visits. It’s also very good for people who are traveling with children, for example, because they may not have their own smartphones. And so having a card makes life much, much easier.
The bottom line is using one of these apps or Navigo Easy card will help you avoid the crowds and get moving faster.
It’s a smart move, and it will help you have a smoother travel in Paris.
My thanks to podcast editors Anne and Christian Cotovan who produced the transcripts.
Next week on the podcast, an episode about discovering France with Australian travel and food writer Alexandra Lalacque.
Thank you so much for listening, and I hope you join me next time so we can look around France together.
Au revoir.
Copyright
[01:03:44] Annie: The Join Us in France travel podcast is written, hosted, and produced by Annie Sargent, and Copyright 2025 by AddictedToFrance. It is released under a Creative Commons attribution, non-commercial, no derivatives license.
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