Carcassonne and AirBnB

Holy smoly, that is one hell of a castle. I can see why Belinda wanted to come here. Either that or she loves hearing me bitch as we walked up the hill to it.  You can see how amazing it was. Just breathtaking. Inside not so much. Basically a continuation of the tourist shops down the hill. But the structure was still cool.

And this guy was fearless

But these girls were too

This is our first, and maybe last, AirBnB. When we checked the AirBnB site out this place looked very nice. Our criteria was only that it be near the station, which I guess this is. It's about a 20 minute walk through a nice part of town. We waited at the front door for Jovi, our contact, and she was prompt and helped us later at the pharmacy but that was the end of the good part. On the website this looked liked a modern, clean apartment. It's not modern and we're not sure about the cleanliness. It doesn't seem like a bad neighborhood, but then again it does. We were told not to walk in the kitchen area after 10pm so we wouldn't wake the guy downstairs. Apparently the ones upstairs didn't have the same constraints. This morning about 645 it sounded like people jousting while riding Shetland ponies. Kids crying. So that was our new wake-up time. We figured we could sleep on the train. It's five hours to Madrid.

This was a very basic apartment, not a part of someone's home nor was it a Bed and breakfast. There were two bedrooms, separated by a halfway. Alice liked that. She said we make too much noise. ?? A small common room and kitchen area and a bathroom. Size wise very good. What looked like a nice remodeled kitchen and bath on the website were just laminate flooring laid down but not finished. The toilet roll holder was broken and curtains didn't open easily. Not a clock worked so it was always "is that the right time?" Part of the ceiling in one bedroom was falling down. The place smelled musty and the girls (well really, old ladies) were afraid to take a deep breath. The soap dispenser was empty but there was a bottle of body soap. There seemed to be plenty of hot water which is probably the most important issue we look for so that was good. At $100 for the night, it just wasn't what we thought it would be. It was middle of the road pricing but bottom of the barrel facilities. All in all we rated it a 1/5.

The dinner we had last night was one of the best, and cheapest. We ate at a creperie called Le Ble Noir. At least a 4/5. One guy handled 9 tables of 24 people. Our crepes, salad and drinks were perfecto.

 

It was a short walk back to our room and a fitful sleep.

Tuesday we had to be at the train station by 917 and I'll have a whole separate post about that. Trains cancelled, connections missed, additional tickets bought, yada yada yada.