Sunny, out-of-the-way Languedoc stretches from the Mediterranean to the Pyrenees in southwest France. It shares a balmy climate, winter wind, grapevines, and the sea with the better-known neighboring region of Provence. To me, Languedoc is somehow more “France in the rough.”

I first came here as a teenager, when I visited Languedoc’s spectacular fortified town, Carcassonne. Sitting on the ramparts, I wrote in my journal:“Before me lies Carcassonne, the perfect medieval city. Like a fish that everyone thought was extinct, somehow Europe’s greatest Romanesque fortress city has survived the centuries. I was supposed to be gone yesterday, but here I sit imprisoned by choice – curled in a cranny on top of the wall.”

Anyone can feel like a kid on a rampart in this ultimate walled city, but it’

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