Sept 25-Oct 29 2025. This will be a long and detailed trip report so if that bothers you it’s fine to skip and move on to the next thread! I have just divided this up into topics so maybe some can just skim thru and pick out what might be helpful to them in planning an adventure.
The Trip: I spent 5 weeks in France, leaving Sept 24 and back home Oct 29. My itinerary was to spend 2 weeks in Paris, take a train down to Carcassonne to meet up with a 2-week Seymour Travels tour, then take a train back to Paris for another week of “rest”, hahaha. As usual, I ran out of time in Paris and did not get to everything I wanted to see. I tried to prioritize outdoor gardens/walking when it was sunny so all the museum/monument passes I got really helped me be a bit more nimble when it came to switching things around due to the weather.
Tour Overview: This tour was Seymour Travels Carcassonne to the Pyrenees itinerary. It was 2 weeks with stays in Carcassonne, Leucate and back to Carcassonne for a few nights at the end. I’d been to Carcassonne for a day trip on a Road Scholar tour but had never spent time in the area. The Cathar and Albigensian Crusade history was not really a part of any history I’ve studied so that was quite interesting (and horrific!). We saw sights ranging from a huge Megalithic Dolmen to a WWII Internment camp and every time period in between!
Group: 8 people. I knew all but one, lol. Well, one I had only met online, haha. There were 2 couples and 4 solo travelers (3 women and 1 man). We had 2 guides driving 2 vans. Mark driving one van and his assistant, Paul Green who was a former Rick Steves bus driver, driving the second one. Mark is so charismatic, well-informed on history and culture and fun to be with. Paul is hilarious and had us in stitches most of the time. His presentation on the Canal du Midi was awesome. These guys have very different personalities but work really well together and provide a wonderful experience for their tour members.
My favorite sites were the Dolmen des Fades which is the biggest passage tomb in Southern France and the Oppidum d'Ensérune which is a hill fort from the 6th Century BC. It overlooks the stunning Étang de Montady which is a swamp that was drained in 1247 to a central point with radial ditches and then to an underground culvert UNDER a nearby mountain. Very cool pizza shaped fields around the center. This area was also where Hannibal camped with his army and war elephants in 218BC on his way to the Alps and Rome. Also….FLAMINGOS!! Whee! I really, really wanted to see them and while I spotted some from the train on the way to Carcassonne I wanted to see some closer and when I was not moving at a fast rate of speed, lol. Mark made sure I saw some although he said there were not as many at “the spot” as there were for the previous tour. I was so happy my tour mates were OK with 2 stops for me to watch birds on a chilly windy morning!!
Experiences: We had 4 wine tastings and a vinegar tasting! The vinegar tasting in Lagrasse was very unusual and interesting. This was a time when I wished I was checking a bag to bring home some of the variety of vinegars and balsamics (which is not vinegar according to the tasting guide!) they offered. I liked the honey flavored vinegar the best, haha. The wine tastings were from 2 different wineries with one vintner doing a tasting at our hotel in Leucate one day and then doing an additional tasting at his cellar the next day. We also could do a tasting at an interesting gypsum mine-turned-wine cellar called Terra Vinea as part of the tour there.
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