Recently I went to Beziers in France for a couple of days. I was here for two nights, less than 48 hours because I wanted a break and it was cheaper for us to fly 1400km to France than to catch a 600km train up north to Edinburgh. Then I found a very interesting hotel in Beziers that was cheaper than a hotel in Edinburgh, making the whole France trip a no brainer.
Hotel La Prison
Let me show you my hotel, it's one of the main reason I decided to come here. Welcome to Hotel La Prison.
Yes, Hotel La Prison is a real prison, or used to be. The prison is next to the cathedral and was built in 1867 to house 48 inmates. At it's peak there were 300 prisoners!! The prison closed in 2009, renovated and reopened as a 50 room 3 star hotel in 2017. Each cell became a standard room, with the cell in between two rooms split in half for the bathrooms. The rooms are basic, no air conditioning or TV - we're in a prison afterall!! You could see the hotel is designed to keep the original vibe, such as the railings, floor and vault ceiling. The bed was one of the most comfortable I slept in a prison hotel.
Beziers is quite a small town, which to be honest didn't have much to do. The most interesting activity was a walk along the canals at Fonseranes to see the nine locks. We started to walk from the Cathedral towards the Pont Vieux, the old bridge.
The Pont Vieux is a pedestrian bridge and looks quite majestic, both at night time looking down from the Cathedral, and looking back up to it.
This part of the canal is before I arrived at the locks. It's where I saw some emergency vehicles and a diver trying to retrieve something that had fallen into the water. If you joined my HPUD Guessing contest the other week, you'll find out what fell into the water in a minute.
The Fonseranes Nine Locks date back to 1680 and covers a distance of 315m with a 21.5m drop. This was taken at the top of the canal and you can see most of the locks, they're all very close together. The canal doesn't look very steep with the locks closed, but it's deemed too steep and dangerous for boats to go straight through.
It was very busy here, both with walkers and cyclists, and a lot of boats passing through. I saw quite a few cruise tours, it looked like an interesting experience going along the canal and through the locks.
All the locks had bridges on the top and some of them were quite low. Like this cruise boat, all the tourists had to go back to the deck downstairs, and the side railings lowered for the ship to pass through safely.
There are also many private leisure boats. It takes a while to open and close the locks, so they try to get as many boats in as safely possibly. We watched these three boats go through a couple of locks.
This guy in the last boat was very experienced. I watched as he steered his boat forward, sitting upright as he approached the bridge. He was so cool, playing dare devil and waited till the last second before he ducked down!! Phew!! That was close!
HPUD Guessing contest
Time to reveal the answer to my HPUD Guessing Game. It was very nice to see a lot of responses and interesting guesses to my little guessing game. In total there were 27 guesses. One person guessed correctly on the first day, followed by a second correct answer later.The correct answer is a wheelchair. Congrats to 
