Our Family: Rennes Le Chateau and Quillan

We've gone on lots of little trips this last week - one to the world-famous Rennes-le-Chateau - you'll have to look it up online as it has a marvelous secret-filled history of excommunicated priests, buried treasure, illicit masses.... Needless to say, we could not resist! The town is very very old, the site goes back to Romans and Visigoths, even dinosaur remains have been found around there.

We drove up a very skinny windy road up to the very top where the Chateau is perched on top of a promontory affording the most amazing 360 degree views. Apparently on a very clear day, one can see 20 different villages! The Chateau is undergoing renovations and attracts treasure-seekers from all over the world (rumours of ancient visigoth treasure, also the documents which link Mary Magdalene to Jesus and their resulting bloodline) keep them coming.

The Church dedicated to Mary Magdelene is one of the most beautiful I've seen. The Abbe Berenger Saunier (the excommunicated priest) spent a fortune redoing the church and surrounds and it's lovely.

Afterwards, we went to the town of Quillan for a picnic and quick walk around. We found a wonderful picnic spot on the banks of the Aude River - Quillan is a very beautiful place, a little bigger than Limoux, Jen and Meg's favorite so far.

Tomorrow we're off to Cadaques, Spain, which was recommended to us by our landlady. We're pretty excited, it's a tiny little fishing village in the Costa Brava Norte. Popular with Spanish and French residents for summer holidays, it could be packed! We're ready, though, for a day swimming in the Mediterranean. We'll post pictures when we get back!

We're all healthy and happy. We've made a list of things we want to see before we leave on Thursday, so we're talking about whitewater rafting and our last Tuesday night market in the square in Limoux. We also visited a fabulous hat museum and a dinosaur museum (very well done) in Esperaza and will post some pictures later on.

Hope you're all well :) Love us.