What should have been a relatively mundane train trip to our next destination — the medieval, walled city of Carcassonne — ended up being a strong contender for my personal Worst Day of Travel award.
After oversleeping our 6am alarm by an hour, we frantically loaded up our bags, desperate to catch the first of a series of three trains that would have us in Carcassonne around 3:30pm. Unable to figure out how to call a French taxi on the phone or find one on the street, we headed to the station on foot, knowing we were going to miss our train to Marseille.
We’d budgeted just a brief overnight visit to Carcassonne, and were stressing about having enough time to see much of anything. As such, we opted to catch the next train to nearby Nice, where we’d have more options. En route to Nice, we pored over the internet trying to figure a way to catch up with either of our two remaining scheduled trains in Marseille or Montpellier. There was a slim chance that a bus from the Nice airport could get us to Marseille in time to make our connection, but traffic thwarted our attempt to get there on time. At the airport we learned of a second bus option that miiight get us to Marseille in time, but would also be a long shot. We got tickets and crossed our fingers.
Our bus pulled into the Marseille train station parking lot with three minutes to spare before our train’s scheduled departure. We grabbed our luggage and made a mad dash through the station. We reached the platform and saw our train just feet away, ready to depart, only to have security tell us we were too late and deny us entry. I’m sure they were just following protocol, but there was a sick feeling having gone through all that, only to watch our train leave right in front of us.
At this point, there was no catching up to our planned itinerary, but we found a bus due in Carcassonne around 5:45pm and booked fares for that. Naïvely thinking it couldn’t get much worse from there, our bus driver decided to correct that notion halfway into our journey when he grazed the rearmost passenger window (conveniently about four feet from my back row seat) with a nearby truck. The glass fractured with a loud “crack,” that quickly branched outward until the whole pane looked like a mosaic of the passing Montpellier downtown.
Word quickly got to the front of the bus; the driver continued a few minutes to our scheduled Montpellier stopover and debarked the passengers for 30 minutes while he tended to the issue. As it turns out, “tending” to the issue was just taking a broom to punch out as much of the outer pane of safety glass as possible. Elegant.
Apparently satisfied with the solution, the driver loaded us all back on and proceeded toward Carcassonne. It hadn’t been long on the highway when we in the back noticed that the remaining pane of glass was rattling, first just a bit, but alarmingly so after a few minutes. With the pane thwacking around in its frame, small glass remnants of the outer window began sprinkling on the young woman seated two seats to my left. She and her companion finally got up and asked the driver to stop the bus. He came back to assess the situation, and handled it thoroughly by… drawing the thin rear curtain and continuing on. As baffling an idea this was inherently, it was rendered even more useless by the fact that the air current that was slipping through the gap in the window caused the curtain to draw back within moments back on the road. Not feeling like holding the curtain in place for another hour, the couple moved to a pair of seats normally reserved, I’m told, for other employees. This of course meant there was no longer anything between me and the flying glass bits, so I spent the remaining 60 minutes covering myself with my jacket and praying to not get a shard shower.
Thankfully unscathed, we arrived at our destination what felt like eons later, but in actuality about two and half hours later than planned. All things considered, we were just happy to be there with some daylight left to enjoy Carcassonne.
As for Carcassonne itself? Truly very enchanting. By the time we arrived, the day-trippers had already vacated the city and we were free to enjoy the its medieval citadel, the Cité de Carcassonne, unencumbered by the crowds we’ve heard get awful at times. The Cité de Carcassonne looks straight out of a fairy tale, encircled with double stone walls punctuated by dozens of Acme-rocket-shaped towers. Did I just date myself with that reference?
We strolled the town and soaked in its atmosphere until sunset, then had a great meal of local fare. Then next morning, we toured the ramparts, where we got to walk along the inner wall, complete with views of the city around and the citadel within.
When it was time to leave, we witnessed a shockingly tearful farewell as Emilia bid adieu to Elliot, the hotel basset hound that was apparently her new BFF du jour, and set off for our next destination: Barcelona.
