Holiday in Transition # 13: Have a Bermudaful Day!

After six long and rough days at sea, we woke up this morning to find we’d arrived in paradise at last.  I know that description sounds a bit over the top, but it’s the way I’ve always felt about arriving in Bermuda, and I still feel that way right to this day.

It’s hard for me to think about Bermuda without sliding into a lyrical mood – which some people might consider maudlin.  Well, let them.  For me, Bermuda is a place of so many memories.

First, memories of my parents.  Both Canadian, they were thrown together in Bermuda by the fortunes of war in 1944-45, and married there.  Then, my sisters and my brother.  When I was 13, our family went all together for a winter holiday in Bermuda.  So often, I recall to mind a visual image of us – at a much younger age – posing, playing, perfecting our own very weird sense of humour.  All the time, my parents right there – watching us, but also reliving their own memories.  Particular memories of my mother and father dancing to the live orchestras found in those days in all the major hotels – and how they loved to dance together!

That first trip hooked me on Bermuda – the island paradise which is truly like no other, anywhere.  I’ve been back so many times that I’ve lost count.  And here come more memories – of people I’ve met, shows I’ve seen, wonderful meals in local restaurants, quiet times of peace and contentment in parks and on beaches.

Then, later in life, I finally married – and my husband loved Bermuda as much as I did.  We travelled there together, twice, and created wonderful new memories for each other in the process.

Now, he’s gone too (cancer, Christmas Day 2013) and it’s just me and my memories.  But that’s such a rich treasure that I always feel uniquely “at home” in Bermuda.  Other places, I go and need to busy myself with visiting attractions, historic sites, churches, castles, whatever.  In Bermuda, it’s enough for me just to be there.

And that’s what I did today.

This was the first time I’d ever arrived in Bermuda by sea – and it created a whole different perspective for me.  When you ride the local ferries or tour boats, you’re always close to the ocean.  Now, I was many stories in the air on my cruise ship, and looking down on buildings that I’m used to staring up at!

As the map shows, Bermuda is a chain of islands occupying the southern quarter of a large oval area – a worn-down seamount – ringed and covered by coral reefs.  They’re the most northerly reefs in the world, thanks to the warm Gulf Stream.  There’s only one safe passage through the reef, and a long winding channel to finally reach Hamilton Harbour.

Most cruise ships today are so large that they have to go to the newer cruise terminal at the former Royal Navy Dockyard.  But my ship, the Ocean Princess, was small enough to work through the narrow gap at Two Rock Passage and come right into a berth on Front Street in Hamilton.

I actually spent most of my day in and around Hamilton.  Explorations of other areas just can't be crammed into the few short hours we had.  Most of the pictures I took today are inspired by the odd experience – I’ve never had it before – of arriving by sea and then viewing a cruise ship docked right in the heart of downtown.

Those cloudy views were taken in the morning from the Paget-Warwick ferry which circles around the inner part of the harbour, serving five different stops across from the city.

The sunnier pictures, later in the day, include two views of the Cathedral of the Church of England on the crest of the city at Church Street – a small but nonetheless austere, dignified and stately example of 19^th century Gothic.

Front Street itself is lined with shops, often with restaurants on the second floor of the buildings.  Together with Reid Street and Church Street, this comprises the heart of Bermuda’s famed luxury shopping district.  Right at the foot of that tall flagpole is the spot where my parents used to meet in 1944-45 when they were courting.

At the west end of Reid Street, the Par-la-Ville Gardens provide a lovely oasis in the heart of the city.  An old traditional moongate reminds us that honeymooners (or any married couples) are to join hands, make a wish, and step through the moongate together.

Of course, the most spectacular views of Hamilton, and of its lovely gem of a landlocked harbour, come as the ship eases away from the berth in the later afternoon and begins the lengthy journey (about 1.5 hours) back to the exit from the reefs.

The highlight of this all-too-brief visit was a streetside patio lunch with a long-time and valued friend, a born-and-bred Bermudian -- or, as some locals pronounce it, “Bermujan.”  Traditional Bermudian accents soften many consonants in a very musical and easy-listening kind of way.

Welcome to one of my several "home" lands, and one that holds many of my most treasured memories.

Holiday in Transition # 12: All at Sea

The “middle passage” of this cruise is made up of six long days at sea – as good a way as I know to recapture the feel of the old days.  You know, when people travelled to other continents by sea (not air), the shipping companies blissfully advertised that “getting there is half the fun” and the passengers roundly cursed the shipping companies as a pack of lying, scheming vultures.

Years ago, an Australian exchange student in one of my classes defined a Canadian thus:  “A Canadian is a person who always talks about the weather first, and eats peanut butter and banana sandwiches.”

We Canadians have been right at home in this phase of the trip.  On sea days, everyone talks about the weather first.  And when the going gets rough, it sometimes feels as if a peanut butter and banana sandwich is the only thing sticky enough to make your stomach settle down and behave itself.

We’ve been through a couple of rough sea days.  Just one picture is quite enough to put you in the picture.

As the captain apologetically said yesterday, “After all, this is the North Atlantic and it is December.”  I’m just grateful that it didn’t get bad enough for them to start stringing hand-ropes across the larger public rooms on board.  This morning, though, things have calmed down a lot and I’m sitting post-breakfast on my balcony, watching the sun light up some clouds, and enjoying the fresh sea breeze.

So I thought I would do a top ten list of things I’ve learned or re-learned in the last 48 hours.

THE TOP 10 REASONS YOU KNOW YOU’RE SAILING IN ROUGH WEATHER

[10]      The outdoor decks are all closed off, including the all-important walking and jogging track.

[9]        The spray is flying past your eighth-deck balcony and coating your sliding glass door.

[8]        The clouds and horizon are doing the shimmy and the waves are doing the twist.

[7]        You curse the clouds, the horizon, and the waves for not getting their act together.

[6]        The dining room suddenly becomes much more popular, since the staff carry everything.

[5]        The pool is drained right to the bottom.  Three-quarters of the drainage is by sloshing.

[4]        The ship’s store is cleaned out of Gravol and pressure bands.

[3]        People stop arguing about whether Gravol works better than pressure bands, or vice versa.

[2]        You get up at 3:00 in the morning to figure out which closet/drawer is banging open and shut.

AND THE NUMBER ONE REASON YOU KNOW YOU’RE SAILING IN ROUGH WEATHER…

[1]        The only people walking in a straight line are the drunks.

But now for the good news.  Yesterday, at the cocktail party for returning guests of Princess, I won the door prize draw: a bottle of sparkling California wine.  Guess what got shared around the table at dinner afterwards!

Last night, with the ship still heaving and lurching unpredictably, the staff captain wanted to cancel the production show in the cabaret.  The singers and dancers were adamant that the show must go on.  They took out a few of the wilder lifts, throws, and spins, but otherwise we got the show in its entirety.  And for the whole of that 45 minute performance, I was completely unaware of any motions the ship was making.  Now, that’s a really impressive example of professional dedication!

********************

A FOOTNOTE:  December 16, 2015

I just wanted to add a couple more quick observations and a couple of even better pictures.  This is our last sea day before Bermuda, and although the waves have been worse on other days this is definitely the windiest day yet.  But, like yesterday, it's sunny and 22 degrees Celsius so pretty nice on the sheltered deck around the pool.  The top deck with the walking/jogging track is closed because of wind speeds (gusts over 80 km/hour).

Another spectacular performance from the singers and dancers last night, again flinging themselves into their routines at full throttle and figuratively thumbing their noses at their pitching and heaving stage.  I got a chuckle this morning as I watched several of them picking their way over the deck by the pool as gingerly as any of their much more senior audiences!

This morning the bow of the ship was flinging some of the biggest clouds of spray yet as we piled into the waves, and I caught a couple of them from my eighth-deck balcony.  Hard for me to estimate the height of the waves from that upper level but I would guess that the swells are running average 12-15 feet with the bigger ones getting up to 20 feet.  

I've also discovered that the ocean is a communist dictatorship.  How else to explain the behaviour demonstrated in this picture?

No matter how much the pool tries to keep all the water on Deck 9 to itself, the ocean brutally and heartlessly causes the ship to heave and pitch, forcing the pool to share of its wealth with the water-deprived deck all around.  If that isn't "communism" at its best, I'd like to know what is!

Holiday in Transition # 11: Have Some Madeira, M'Dear!

As soon as we left Gibraltar the other night, there was no question that we were now out of that placid millpond, the Mediterranean Sea, and on the open Atlantic Ocean.  While I was eating dinner we reached the open water, and the ship immediately took on a long slow pitch over the waves.  Every ten waves or so there came a bigger one which was enough to cause the dining room curtains to sway slightly.  And the water’s been maintaining that rhythm ever since.  Fortunately, it doesn’t bother me, and I slept well for the last two nights.

Our next port of call was the Portuguese island of Madeira, north of Spain’s Canary Islands, southwest of the Straits of Gibraltar, and several hundred kilometres offshore from western Morocco.

It’s a long-extinct volcanic island which has experienced a good deal of erosion, but still sticks up a long way above the ocean.  It’s been a favourite holiday and winter getaway for people from the United Kingdom in particular for many decades.  Even today, tourism is the # 1 industry in Madeira with the famous sweet wines which share the island’s name coming second, and bananas in third place.

The island has a population of over 200,000 people and in such a small land area this inevitably means building up, both in storeys and along hillsides.  Travelling around Madeira therefore involves a great deal of steep hill climbing – and, when not climbing a hill, the road is going through it in one of the numerous tunnels.  It’s a beautiful place, and the air is full of lovely scents from the trees and flowers, once you get clear of the busy capital city of Funchal – whose name, by the way, means “A Plantation of Fennel”.

Once again, here is a place I really want to return to so I can explore more of it, and get beyond the massive urbanized area that flourishes all around Funchal harbour.  The tour I had booked didn’t manage that at all, although it was certainly informative and entertaining.

From the ship we drove along the waterfront to the cable car station where we proceeded to ride up the mountain behind the city.  It was a relaxing 15-minute ride, much longer than the one in Gibraltar, and with seats for everyone (in Gibraltar, they used shoehorn tactics).  Unfortunately, I got a seat facing uphill and with that and the tinted glass couldn’t get any pictures.  However, when we got out at the top, we had this view back down towards the harbour.

In the midst of all the modern construction, the old village of Monte has been carefully preserved as a tourist attraction.  The village square with its overarching trees is just as restful as it looks.

Where most of the people in our tour set off uphill to visit the old church, I went the other way, dropping down a steep path into a valley below the square, which had a lovely little botanical garden.  It was a pleasant surprise that so many flowers were still in bloom in December.

Anyone who’s been to Madeira certainly knows what comes next – the infamous toboggan ride.  It’s a huge operation now, with dozens of wicker-basket toboggans and dozens more traditionally garbed men to pull and ride and steer them.  It’s a very steep 2-kilometre high-speed ride down the paved roads with all their corners and twists and turns.  The crew, if I may so call them, ride on the back and steer the contraption with the aid of two ropes and their traditional goat-skin-soled shoes.  I’m sure the rest of them were just like ours, a pair of comedians who kept pretending that they were going to let the toboggan turn around and slide backwards, or drop a runner into a rain gutter, or slam our elbows into a stone wall.  Of course, they had it completely under control the whole time and it was great fun! 

(note the flat patio apparently tilting up and away at the left side of the picture!)

Our sledge actually threw part of its runner on the way down and they had to add some kind of emergency filler to get us to the end.  The fact that they had the repair kit right in the basket with us suggests that this happens fairly often.  And then at the bottom we saw the truck loaded up with toboggans to be taken back up to Monte, while the crews all stood around waiting (presumably) for vans or a bus for the same purpose.

After that we drove to another viewpoint with this great panorama of the harbour and city.  I didn’t pay much attention other than to think that the third cruise ship, now arrived, looked vaguely familiar.  But later in the day we’ll get back to that subject.

There were also some more lovely flowers blooming around the lookout park, including these spectacular bird-of-paradise flowers, a particular favourite of mine.

From the lookout, we continued down into the city, and then walked along the pedestrian shopping street to reach the premises of the Blandy family firm of wine merchants.  There we had a tasting session of genuine Madeira wines.  As many of you will know, these are very sweet and fortified wines, usually served as an aperitif (if dry) or with dessert (sweet), and running typically to about 19% alcohol, which isn’t far short of the content of an Irish cream or many other liqueurs.  Usually I avoid this sort of thing, being diabetic, but the tastings weren’t large.  We all got a sweet one to start, and then could get up to two more of any kind.  I went from the sweet to the dry, which was still pretty sweet stuff.  This helps to explain why I sheer away from any restaurant dishes made with Madeira sauces!

With that we returned to the ship, and it was such a sunny day that I finally made it into the pool for the first time on this trip.  It’s also warmer.  As we’ve gone farther south, we’re getting closer to the tropics and daytime highs in the low 20s Celsius (i.e. low 70s Fahrenheit) are now the rule, at least for a while.

Oh, yes, that other cruise ship.  Just before we sailed away at 4:45pm, the captain announced that the Phoenix-Reisen’s Artania was the former Princess Cruises’ Royal Princess, a ship in which I had sailed way back in 2000, to Iceland, Norway, and Spitsbergen.  She was a lovely vessel, the first cruise ship in the world built with all outside cabins, and one of the last built with a traditional teak promenade deck running right around the entire perimeter of the ship at Deck 5.  I walked a great deal on that deck during our sea days, and remember that it only took a little over 4 complete laps to go one mile.  She was a wonderful sea boat too, and handled splendidly the few rough days we had on that trip.

And Madeira also had one last treat for us, just as we sailed clear of the harbour.  Shortly after we dropped the harbour pilot off, we picked up another kind of escort.

Yes, Madeira is definitely a place where I’d like to spend more time.  The winter weather is right smack in my comfort zone, the people are very friendly, restaurants all look pleasantly informal, and there’s so much more of the island waiting for me to explore it.

Now, for the next five days, we are “at sea” on the long run across to Bermuda.  Items of concern: daily walks on the track, swimming in the pool (weather permitting), meals, entertainment, and chatting with shipboard friends.  Really nothing much to post about, although I might do a short one about the “sea day” experience before we arrive at out next port of call.

Holiday in Transition # 10: World-Famous Boulder

It stands near the southern tip of the Iberian Peninsula like a gigantic exclamation mark – a symbol of British imperial power or of Spanish humiliation, depending on whose viewpoint you take.  But the stark silhouette of the Rock of Gibraltar looms larger still through centuries of history, a fortress whose strength has certainly determined the fate of nations located nowhere near it.

If you are going to visit Gibraltar for the first time, I would recommend a prior crash course in the history of the region and in the history of warfare over the last two to three centuries.  And that is only partly a joke, because the story of Gibraltar the place is the story of Gibraltar the fortress and naval base.  The two are utterly and totally intertwined.

In this respect I was lucky because my historic background prepared me to get a good deal out of the visit – and I was lucky in another way, because my tour guide was a true specialist in Gibraltarian history.

The first thing he pointed out to us was that the famous Prudential Insurance slogan – “Solid as the Rock of Gibraltar” – is sadly founded on an untruth.  The Rock may look solid but, like Ontario’s Niagara Escarpment, it’s made of porous limestone.  The Rock is riddled equally with natural caves and man-made tunnels.  Large portions of the Rock are now in fact hollow!

For this post, a map will certainly be helpful. 

Gibraltar’s location, as much as its height, makes it equally the key to the east-west route through the Straits of Gibraltar, from Atlantic to Mediterranean, and the north-south route from Spain to Morocco.  The Rock was ceded to England by Spain in the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713, and has remained a British possession ever since.  

As a key stopover point en route to the colonies in Africa, India and East Asia, Gibraltar came in for a good deal of attention during both the Napoleonic Wars in the 19^th Century and the two great World Wars in the 20^th Century.  The combination of Gibraltar and the Spanish city of Algeciras on the west side of the bay has produced what is unquestionably the busiest port we've visited on this cruise.  Gibraltar also served as a key bastion, along with Malta and Cyprus farther east, in protecting the Suez Canal which was the most critical lifeline of imperial trade and defence for the British Empire.

But Gibraltar does have a weakness.  The Rock has only the most limited resources, and depends heavily on links to the outside world for vital supplies – and the only land link is through Spain.  However, Spain has never given up hope of getting Gibraltar back, and there have been times when the border has been closed or at least heavily jammed up with bureaucratic red tape.  Not only that, but the massive Rock takes up so much of the tiny territory that the only possible location for an airport is on that flat strip of land linking the Rock to the Spanish mainland – and the airport sits right beside the border fence.  Indeed, out of sheer necessity, the airport’s runway stretches across the entire width of the peninsula and into the ocean and therefore has to be crossed by the one and only road out of Gibraltar.

On the other hand, Gibraltar does have its own secret weapon – the stubbornly determined Gibraltarian people.  Twice now in referendums they have demonstrated their overwhelming (over 99%) determination to remain as a British territory. 

All in all I was completely engaged and fascinated by the stories told by our guide and the way in which land, water, and people all interweave in those stories.  Among the fascinating spots we visited was the Gibraltar Museum in which the rooms of a genuine preserved Moorish bath rub shoulders with artifacts from the long centuries of warfare in which Gibraltar has changed hands so many times.

So, herewith, a photo portfolio of the unique territory of Gibraltar.  First, a panorama of the Rock from the vantage point of a cruise ship in the harbour.

Europa Point, the southernmost tip of Gibraltar, facing directly towards Morocco across the Straits.

A panorama of the town and harbour from the summit of the rock, at the top of the cable car route.

A panorama of the airport, with the broad main road crossing the runway and the boundary fence extending into the ocean at either side.  The far edge of the modern terminal building sits right on the border.  Beyond lies the Spanish town of La Linea (“The Line”).

The most famous inhabitants of the Rock, its wild monkeys (despite the common name of “Barbary Apes” they are in fact not apes) at the summit station of the cable car.

The interior of the Great Siege Tunnels. These were excavated during the last Spanish attempt to reclaim Gibraltar by force, in the early 1780s.  The tunnels gave access to numerous spots on the north face of the Rock, from which heavy cannon fire could be trained directly down upon the so-called “Neutral Ground” where the airport and La Linea now stand.

After today’s visit, Gibraltar joins the list of places that I want to visit again in more depth.  The next trip to Europe is shaping up to be a very expensive one!

Holiday in Transition # 9: An Epic Poem in Stone and Glass

I’ve mentioned several times in this blog the experience of meeting different periods of history face to face all at once.  European cities tend to do that to you, as buildings from different eras cluster cheek by jowl in the central districts.

Today’s experience is on a different level altogether: a single building which seems to coexist simultaneously in eras ranging from the 1200s to the 2000s and from here on into the future.  And that’s only one level of the experience.  The structure in and of itself can only be described as awe-inspiring. 

Not the least of it is the sheer genius of the man who imagined it all first, although he never lived to see more than a fraction of the work completed.

By now, since I’m cruising in the Mediterranean, some of my faithful readers have no doubt guessed which building I am describing.  For those who haven’t, here it is.

The portion to the left looks like the last and most elaborate period of Gothic cathedral building in the 1200s – although as you study it closely, you see that the shapes are often “not quite right” for that style.  The oval windows look distinctly eighteenth-century Palladian.  The interior certainly comes across as strikingly modern in effect.  The four tall spires – well, good luck trying to relate those to any other style of European architecture.

The church or “temple”, as its creator preferred, is the Basilica Sagrada Familia (Basilica of the Holy Family) in Barcelona, and the creator of this intensely powerful epic poem in stone was named Antoni Gaudi.  He was, at one and the same time, an architect, an artist, and a visionary with the soul of a poet – a very potent combination.  One single remark of his tells you almost all you need to know about the completely unique form of his church: “The forest is my cathedral.”  Now, take a look inside:

Those extraordinary columns and vaults are not just decorative.  Using nothing more than a pencil and paper, and an observant eye for nature, Gaudi evolved a solution to the problem which had bedevilled the builders of great churches ever since the time of the Romans: how to bridge the space with a roof while still freeing the walls from the load of the roof so they could be transformed into windows.

Of course, the great Gothic builders evolved the flying buttress on the outside of the building, to carry the load.  Some commentators, mistakenly in my opinion, have tried to define the design of Sagrada Familia as a modern adaptation of Gothic.  But to me it’s much more than that.  Gaudi’s slanting, branching and twisting columns make even the outside buttresses redundant and – in the process – create a style so unique that it can only be itself.  The result in the outer walls of the nave is a spectacle like no other.

The soaring height of the roof is the most startling feature.  The height is accentuated by the fact that the Sagrada Familia actually covers a smaller amount of land than many of the world’s other great religious structures.  Height is Gaudi’s essential dimension, and his design is nothing less than heaven-storming in its ambition. 

Light comes through in the most unexpected places – some areas are lit artificially, but some – like the symbols along the roofline of the nave – are actually lit by windows behind them.

Notice how the upper branches of the pillars in this picture change shape as they climb.  Some of the columns even twist around in a kind of spiral.  In accordance with Gaudi’s observation that nature rarely contains straight lines, the building is full of curves and angles from the main structure right down to the detail of this railing on a balcony.

Most of the decoration in fact is on the exterior – this by Gaudi’s intention.  He lived to see the near-completion of the Bethlehem Façade before his death in 1926.  It includes figures in fairly realistic styling, with each one portraying a different real person who worked on or lived near the church -- shown by this scene of the Adoration of the Shepherds.

But Gaudi knew that he would not live to see the work completed, and he expressed his wish that artists who came to work on it after him should express their own styles and feelings.  Gaudi did make clear that he wanted the Passion Façade, depicting the suffering and death of Christ, to strike awe and terror into the viewer.  The artist Josep Maria Subirachs who headed up the team of sculptors that began work on it in 1987 certainly achieved that objective – although the results have stirred controversy ever since.  

It’s going to be quite something to see how the third and largest façade, the Glory Façade (begun in 2002) will appear when it is completed and unveiled.  That’s only one of many parts of the Sagrada Familia that are still far from finished.  With the aid of modern technology and materials, and financed by admission fees and donations, the speed of the work is accelerating.  Consider this photo, taken later in the day from the heights of Montjuic.  Although it’s hazy, you have no trouble seeing the spires and the construction cranes in the distance.  When the church is completely finished (estimated for 2026) it will be just about twice as tall as what you now see.  

For a video preview of how the process will continue to completion, go to the church’s own website:  www.sagradafamilia.org/en 

My reaction to this extraordinary building is difficult to analyze as it affects me on so many levels at the same time.  I’m humbled by the faith of the man who began it, for it’s the same faith as that of the great Gothic cathedral builders of the Middle Ages.  I’m completely awed by the genius he displayed in solving the structural problems that have always bedevilled the builders of these huge churches.  And I am absolutely blown away by the sheer poetry of the space, the light, the shapes, the forms, that combine together – the total effect being far greater than the sum of its parts.  We had a guided tour of the Basilica, and afterwards were given 20 minutes of free time before returning to our bus.  Some people headed for the facilities, some for the gift shop.  I made a beeline back inside, and just sat for 20 minutes in the centre of the nave, letting the power and beauty and even elegance of the total structure soak in.  I could have easily stayed for 2 hours longer, right in the same spot.

Yes, I know there’s a great deal more to Barcelona which I missed.  I’ll get to some of those features on my next visit.

Holiday in Transition # 8: The Time Machine

Somewhere around my tenth year I received, as a Christmas or birthday gift, a picture book about France and another in the same series about Greece.  Those books played a part in stirring up my passion for travel, a passion which has only gotten stronger as the years go by.  There was one place in particular in the book about France that I was absolutely determined to visit some day – and yesterday, “some day” finally arrived.

This adventure could hardly have been more different from the tour of the Cote d’Azur.  For one thing, I had to set my alarm to honk me awake at 5:00am because we were docking early and the tour was starting right away, even before many of the people in the ship were awake.  But of course, this being the Languedoc region in the south of France, we didn’t start precisely on time.

Our ship docked at the port town of Sete, a bustling modern centre with diverse industries.  We staggered aboard our coach in varying states of semi-wakeful drowsiness, then drove through town, out onto the motorway, and southwest for 1¾ hours to the city of Carcassonne.   

The glory of Carcassonne, and it is a unique one indeed, is an entire medieval walled city.  Yes, I know that it's stretching a point to call it "medieval".  A good deal of it was restored and “improved” by the 19^th century architect and antiquarian Eugene Viollet-le-Duc.  He was commissioned to restore the walled city, which had fallen into great disrepair.  Work began in 1853, and was still under way at the architect’s death a quarter century later.

What you see today, then, may not be strictly authentic.  No matter, to visit Carcassonne is to be transported bodily backwards into the Middle Ages.  Simply walking around the double walls with eyes wide open will give you a multi-layered course in the history of the art of fortification, from the time of the Romans forward for over a thousand years into the 15^th Century.  No wonder, then, that UNESCO has certified the ancient walled city as a World Heritage Site.  It’s a virtual time machine.

And if you really want to annoy people, you can always buy a guidebook and memorize the proper names of every single tower and barbican in the outer and inner walls, and the Ducal Castle!

We were fortunate to have a guide who obviously knew the subject backwards, and had a great knack for giving us “just enough” detail in order to fill in the picture and bring the old place to life, without overwhelming us with far too much of a good thing.

The ancient walled city covers a sizable amount of ground on top of a steep hill overlooking the River Aude and the modern city.  Here’s an aerial photo taken from the internet to give you an impression.

We entered through the east “Narbonnaise” gate at the left side of that aerial photo.

From there, our guide took us on a circuit between the inner and outer walls of the fortified city, pointing out details like the remaining Roman stonework…

…and brickwork. 

In both cases, the wall was somehow built downwards under the older work when the ground between the walls was levelled in the Middle Ages.  We also took in the views down the steep northern and western faces of the hill below the walls.

We then entered the city by the west gate, pausing for a moment by an old house certainly used by the Inquisition in 1233, and possibly even the place where the Inquisition first began.  This was during the time of the Catharist or Albigensian heretical schism in the Roman Catholic Church. 

As we climbed higher into the city, it became obvious, although our guide did point out the fact, that most of the houses surrounding us were in fact of 19^th Century design, dating from the period of Viollet-le-Duc’s restoration work on the fortress walls and towers.  It also became obvious, even without the guide saying so, that most of the place is now a gigantic tourist trap of shops and restaurants, and even a few hotels and inns, and replete (even on an out-of-season weekend) with costumed performers roaming the streets and staging mock swordfights, jousts, etc.  On the other hand, the irregular and steeply sloping cobbled streets are unquestionably the genuine article.

And there are a few older buildings around.  There’s the Ducal Castle, built within the fortress in the 1300s after the Languedoc came officially under the rule of the Kings of France in Paris.  According to our guide, it was not built to hold off enemies from without but rather to protect the King’s envoy from the people of the city who were definitely not thrilled to have lost their independence!  I’d be inclined to agree because the Castle backs right up against the city’s outer walls, which it certainly would not do if external foes were the greatest fear.

There’s this beautiful example of an old medieval half-timbered house, French style.

The former Bishop’s palace is now a very high-end hotel and restaurant.

And the crown jewel of the place is the Basilica (formerly a Cathedral) of St-Nazaire.  Begun in the Romanesque style of the south...

...it was completed with a high Gothic transept and chancel after the Bishop was given a fragmentary relic of the Crown of Thorns for which the famous Sainte-Chapelle was built in Paris by the King.  The resemblance to the Sainte-Chapelle within the chancel of St-Nazaire, although on a much more modest scale, is unmistakable.

After visiting the Basilica, we adjourned to one of the restaurants for lunch, which came supported at each table by an included bottle of a smooth, delicious local wine.

At that point, sadly, we had to return to our coach and drive back into the 21^st Century at Sete.  I would have gladly stayed for a few more hours to tour the castle, and walk around the circuit of the walls (the only area for which you have to pay an entrance fee).  But that’s the curse of the guided tour: there’s never enough time.