We had to drive an hour south to Carcassonne, to fly RyanAir out of their small airport. We pulled out of our underground parking garage, the sun was shining bright and it looked like a beautiful day. The first thing Randi said was "it's too bad we aren't staying in France this weekend, the weather report looks like it will be nice here". Looking back, it appears Saint Randi Mae predicted the future.
When we arrived at the small Carcassonne airport the first thing the lady at the counter said was "you know your flight is cancelled, right ?...right ?...hello ?" We were in a state of shock. She shouldda just said "you know you're f*cked, right ?" Apparently, the French Air Traffic Controllers went on strike for just that weekend. The strike 'concept' in France is very different than we know it. They plan strikes. They have annually planned strikes. And I think they really equate to more like scheduled vacation time. This particular weekend strike may have occurred just because of the excellent weather forecast for the weekend...that's a guess.
So our flight got canceled. It seemed the luck of the Irish was bad. We felt like crawlin under a shamrock. I mean...where's me lucky charms ? It was so disappointing at first. But after maybe 20 minutes of phone calls and finding free wireless internet, where we know we can, anywhere in France ("You deserve a break today") at McDonalds, we were able to successfully rebook the entire trip (hotels, car rental, airline) for the following weekend, without any cost to us...things didn't seem so bad. It was really nice out that day (mid 60s and sunny), it was Friday and we had the day off already. So we decided we would just keep driving south and head for the Mediterranean coast.
There were a couple cities we had drove past many times now, on our way to other destinations, that we decided we would take the time to see. The first one being Narbonne. You can see the mammoth Narbonne Cathedral (Cathédrale Saint-Just-et-Saint-Pasteur de Narbonne) from the highway. 
We decided to make it our first stop and were not disappointed. As it turned out, we think we may have liked Narbonne more than any other town we visited that weekend. And we think the cathedral makes our Top 10 list of incredible number of cathedrals we've seen over the past year (it has to be on some kind of list). With the wind whistling through the walls and sun coming in and out of the clouds, at times beaming through the tall mountains of stained glass, the presence of God was plausible there.
Outside we had a coffee in the main square where the Via Domitia was discovered during construction work there 30 years ago. It was the first Roman road built in Gaul (France), constructed in 118 BC. It was supposedly traveled by Hercules of all people. From there we went to Beziers. This was a place we wanted to stop at for a while, along with Montsegor, as another part of our Cathar research. A very sad story took
place there in the year 1209 when the Catholic holy war against Catharism, called the Albigensian Crusade was authorized by the Pope at the time. The Crusaders massacred the entire city, no one was spared, Catholic or Cathars. Not even when they took refuge in the churches. There is a famous quote from one of the commanders of the crusade. When asked by a Crusader how to tell Catholics from Cathars once they had taken the city, the abbot supposedly replied, "Kill them all, God will know His own". Very evil. The statue there, with the cathedral of Saint Nazaire in the background seems to speak of the event.
Finally we drove down to the coast to a small fortified town on the Mediterranean called Aigues-Mortes. The name in French means "dead waters". If I was in charge of tourism there, I might try to change that. It was really a special little town though, which could almost make 
the list of the Top 10 most beautiful villages of France but really...who wants "dead waters" on the list. We stayed in the 200 year old hotel named L'Hostellerie des Remparts. It is located inside the old walled city, at the foot of the ramparts. The hotel was a former garrison of knights, with stone walls and old exposed beams. The room looked very sparse, with high, empty walls but it had that romantic castle feel to it. Definitely nicer than the Dead Waters Inn down the road...just kidding. 
Out of our tall windows we looked right at the Tour de Constance monument there. That night we were worried we may not find a decent place to eat but to our surprise we ended up at the very sheik Restaurant Le Dit Vin. Randi had bouillabaisse and I ate 'the bull'. Everything, including the wine, was very good. The next morning we drove into the bigger city of Montpellier and walked the inner city for a short time, before we both realized we just wanted to go back to our place and relax. It was nice to get home on Saturday, not do much of anything and have Sunday to take a little walking tour of Toulouse.
