On the road to Carcassonne

I hate it when I lose things. I spent over an hour last night looking for my travel journal. Now I'm going to have to rely on my memory to tell this story.

Let's see how far I can get in 20 minutes.

Gotta stay on task.

I'm listening to NPR and Sarah Palin's name keeps coming up and whenever the reporter says 'caucus' I swear it sounds like 'carcass.'

Oh yeah. Focus.

I've mentioned a few times that I went to Europe in 2005. It was part of a choir trip to Barcelona. I was about to turn 39 for the first time and I figured it was time - way past time. I had wanted to travel the world ever since I was a young girl but the farthest I had ever been from home at that point was probably the far eastern part of the Gaspé Peninsula. Or maybe Sanibel Island. I'm actually not sure which was farther. I should look that up.

Anyway, I guess I can't tell the story honestly without mentioning that I went on the trip with the man I had been dating for over a year - J, whom I met during a relatively short stint singing Alto in our church choir.

Oh geez. I have four minutes before I have to jump in the shower.

So there we were in Spain in the early winter of 2005. After completing our choral performance schedule, we could finally make plans to go to France for a couple of days. I could have spent weeks, months, years exploring Barcelona and the surrounding area, but we had just 10 days. And there was no way I could not travel the short distance to the French border to see what there was to see ...

An auberge!

My favorite time of day AND leftover apple pie. Yum. It's like the day after Thanksgiving. Except I have to go to work shortly. So I can't linger over pie and then go back to sleep. But that's OK. If I got to do what I wanted every day, it wouldn't be special, right?

So ... yesterday's photo ... a friend called me last night to ask what it was. It is kind of an odd photo, isn't it?   I totally meant to ask the proprietors of Auberge du Balestié what was up with the horseshoe hanging on the stable. I figured there was some really interesting story behind it. But I never got around to asking. I think I completely forgot until we were back on the road to Carcassonne.

Doesn't the photo below look sooo French? I don't even know if that outbuilding is still there. 

According to the Web site for l'Auberge, the Alletts have continued to make the renovations still in the planning stages at the time I visited over five years ago. Over a bottle of 2003 Château Parazols-Bertron Minervois,  David Allett told a delightful story of how he and his wife left their life in England to move to a somewhat remote area in the Pyrenées. The story of how we came upon their auberge is rather cool - at least I thought so - and I've been wanting to write about it for more than five years.

Dang. Gotta get ready for work now.

An auspicious start

Why? 

 This is my favorite time of the morning. Not the actual time, that is. Ideally I would not be up before 7. Ever. But whatever time I have to get up, I try to allow space for those still, quiet moments before the day really starts. When I can grab a fresh, hot cup of strong coffee and huddle back in bed with my laptop to check e-mails and news feeds, and, on the best days, contemplate the wide open possibilities of a blog post.

On this first day of November I'm thinking about journeys. Travels real and imagined, near and far. I have no idea where this thinking will take us. But for fun, I'll start with France.

à demain!