The Walk to Cassonne

After passing many fields and small villages (each with a church) I was in Cassonne. It took about 1.5 hours to get there from St. Sulpice, which was not too bad. I began to walk and found an information booth. I waited about five minutes for the lady in front of me to get her information and got mine in two. I was given a map and shown the route to walk in order to get to the old town.

I saw a supermarket and went in search of razors, lip balm and water. It was a success for the water and razors. One pharmacy had no lip balm, the next was too expensive, Sephora had no lip balm, and then I went to a third place and asked and she had it in a drawer behind the counter. I walked out with juicy, moist, apricot flavored lips.

I headed back to the main street that lead to the old village and fortress; I love that street. It was filled with cute little boutiques and souvenir shops. I checked out the prices for the postcards and crepes so that I would get the best deal. This road lead to a beautiful fountain and I assumed to just walk around the fountain. The other side of the fountain lead to a street that was for military only and said keep out. I assumed that this was the end of walking straight.

I followed the map and headed to the right. This "map" that they gave us looked like a great thing. The streets that you needed to take were outlined in green, it was like fool proof...or so it seemed. When you looked at the map to really use it, it was horrible. It only had the main streets labeled and most of the main streets changed names randomly (the map did not show this). Also, you never knew if you had gone too far as none of the side streets were labeled. It was an evil trick of a map.

I know that the issues with the map were not limited to me as I passed many others looking at the map, turning it, looking for the street names and wandering aimlessly. I came across a family with a map, who looked like they knew where they were going. My idea: follow them. Reality: they asked me where old city was. A couple of minutes later we could see the castle in the distance.