Carcassonne Warnings and Dangers

In the game of "cat and mouse" (and I don't think the mice population define this as a game), this stealthy feline found a playmate at the base of the castle walls. Yes, that is a live Mickey in his mouth.

Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus, the catchy title of the 1992 bestseller by John Gray, succinctly expresses an ancient dilemma. What--if anything--do men's and women's brains do differently?

The general statement that men and women respond and behave differently under the same circumstances is true; For example, from the crib, male babies tend to be more aggressive and females more passive. As adults, in spatial operations, men have the edge in such skills as negotiating a maze, reading a map, and quickly discriminating between right and left. Men also perform better than women when asked to visualize an object and imagine rotating it. On the other hand, women tend to perform better than men when asked to look at objects of different shapes, sizes, and colors, and then to group them in some order.

This still doesn't explian why a woman turns the map all around when a man is asking for the road to travel, while I like the map at one point so I can better visualize our position. Help!

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No, it is not about taking care of the kids when walking on the ramparts where of course you have to be careful, as there are no barriers.
Something not dangerous at all, here, just some fun.
You walk alone at the feet of the high walls, in a quiet area, your mind is out of time, you don’t even think of something, just walk and dream and suddenly. . . HAAAAAA!
Ah, the voice was a bit high, it did not really work with me; I don’t know if the kids are part of the tourist attraction or entertainment, if they were just there and played to frighten the visitors who passed by on this isolated inner side of the outer walls. May be that would have worked at dusk, as the make up would be more expressive in twilight.
Well, there is a door in the wall and the kids rushed out with a big scream, supposed to be scaring, when a visitor passes by, and I photographed them after we laughed together.

Am amazed that people feel the need (there are public toilets 3 minutes away), but they obviously do (and frequently) otherwise the people who own the shop wouldn't need to put this notice in their window!

More than a warning, this is just something to keep in mind.
Most European cities are expensive in some way. In London and Italy lodging for example, is very expensive compared to Spain. But in France, it seems everything is pretty expensive: food, clothes, parking. So, plan accordingly so you can enjoy the most of your trip.

I stopped at a gas station/picnic area. The public restrooms were the strangest I've ever seen. Unisex toilets, with no doors. I use the word toilet loosely. It was basically a hole in the ground with no means of flushing. To say the least I waited until I got to my destination. These were very primitive facilities. I've never seen anything like it in the states. Thank God I did not take any photos of this place, I think VT woudl have censored me.

Carcassonne is in France, so everyone speaks French, no big surprise here. But before speaking English, people speak more Spanish and/or catalan because it is so close to Spain (3 hours from Barcelona City). don?t worry if you don?t speak either one, some people do speak english, or are nice enough to try and help you. There is always the Universal sign language :-)

If you are waiting for an important phone call, better make sure the front desk speaks English 1st, we did, but the call came in at night, and the only English speaking guy only works days, when I found out the night person speaks no English at all, I told my husband better go downstairs, and check why the call he's been waiting for was late, and the guy was busy yelling "NO ENGLISH! NO ENGLISH!" to the phone, not only it's the call my husband's waiting for, and the caller said he called many times, had a hard time to get my husband on the important conference call, no matter how he changed his requests in French, all he got was "NO ENGLISH!".

All TV channels are in French, you may find many familiar American TV shows & movies, but all in French, and most TV news are domestic or local.