Carcassonne

We toured the town and Castle today.  I think this is probably one of the bext times of year to come to Carcasonne, as rthe streets and castle were pretty empty.  Even though it has a decidedly "touristy" feel to it, it's a pretty cool place.  First, breakfast:

Apparently, architects used to have even more things to worry about than they do today:  they even had to design in treachery-mitigation!

But I managed to displease ZZN

Then dinner at l'Escargot

Road trip!

First stop:  Montpellier.  Ever since our first trip here, I've been wanting to visit again and to show it to mom.  After parking in the terrifyingly narrow underground lot, we had a lovely meal at Didaskali, then walked out to the arcade for some pictures

Next, off to Carcassonne.  I've wanted to go there for a long time, but it's always been a little to far away.  We parked in the Hotel lot, and after a little confusion at check in, dragged our bags to the family suite and had dinner

A ride to the park

with the choppah!

Dinner out!

Mom watched the kids while Chloe and I went out to Ciao a te, which was fabulous, as usual.  We started with the zucchini parmiggiano, followed by the cepe ravioli with meatballs (me) and schrimp scampi (chloe), and finally a tiramisu.  Still one of my favorite restaurants.  

THANKS MOM!!

Abalone

Abalone was a favorite of my dad.  When I was a kid, I took a skin diving lesson at Cal.  The instructor was pretty bad, and I was not a very good student, so I never figured out how to equalize the pressure in my eardrums.  Instead, I would just dive as far down as I could go until the pain in my ears became unbearable and I would turn around.  This was all done in a deep pool at a Cal gym, but at the end of the course we took a trip up past Fort Ross to go skin diving in a marine preserve.  The instructor also mentioned that outside of the preserve, we would be able to dive for abalone as well.  This fact excited my dad enough that he agreed to drive myself and another few kids up to the dive site.  The first step was wetsuit rental, where I suffered my first embarrassment of the trip.  Despite being the same height that I am now,  I weighed roughly 125 pounds (56kg).  This meant that none of the wetsuits that were available fit me very well.  None except the ladies models, that is.  So I ended up with one of those, much to my chagrin.  The morning of the dive, we left very early (my memory is that its was still dark out), and drove up the coast.  There was a thick fog covering the entire area, but some excited looking instructors:  they were at least going to get some abalone out of this deal!  I donned my ladies wetsuit, and then slowly slid into the ridiculously cold water.  I distinctly remember my boob flap filling with water and sloshing around comically.  Once out on the water and acclimated to the cold, I started feeling pretty bad.  It was something about the motion of the kelp moving with the swell, and pretty soon I was feeling sick.  I started paddling back in, but it was too late and puked into the sea.  My dive partner shrieked and tried to paddle away as quickly as possible, but it was no good, and he was soon engulfed in the orange effluvia.  Interestingly, whereas pre-blow I didn't see many fish, soon we were surrounded by schools of fish to enjoy.  After this, I felt a lot better, but because of the ear pain issue came back to the shore sans abalone.  One of the instructors friends took pity on the skinny, vomit coated kid returning empty handed to his disappointed dad and gave me an abalone, which made both of our days.


Anyway, Chloe bought an abalone at the market today, and after discovering that it was still alive, we decided to slice it up into sashimi and sushi!  I did not remember how Kenji used to process the thing, so I had to google how to remove all the disgusting sacs of random bile and excrement.  Zoe was not impressed with the look of it at first, stating that "It did not look delicious", but by the end was inhaling slices of abalone as fast as I could cut them.  We also made abalone sushi, all of which was excellent

A family walk

VTT with Chloe and then dinner

I took my MTB out on the same route as CZ today.  She was a monster on the climb to Quaix, as expected.  Vertical climbing rate of 1000m/hr, which just about killed me on the mountain bike.

Later on, mom watched the kids again, and we went to an excellent restaurant in Correncoin called "le provence" with Lolo and Vero.  We shared an enormous and beautiful Bar (sea bass) with an amazing Puligny-Montrachet.

Oh, and there were desserts, too.  We ordered the "café gourmand", a concept that I was not familiar with until recently.  I had seen it on many menus, but had always taken it literally and just assumed that the "gourmand" referred to the café itself -- so like ... special beans?   However, what it actually is, is a café accompanied with a selection of small desserts.  I love the concept, and the Provence put together an all star team, shown below.

Thanks again mom!

Hank's

We had a lovely lunch with Hank and Eliane at their place up in St. Pancrasse with the kids.

And then a quick ride up to Proveysieux

Hey, it's still cold!

Especially in the morning.  Sorry, mom!

A cold ride up to Planfay

But not too slow!

Moon over the Néron

Still cold

National pastime!