As we began our self-guided tour we were totally on our own and there was very mystical music playing from speakers nestled throughout. At first we thought it was just a great mood setter. Then we encountered a group of people at one of the first settlement areas. Everyone was totally silent, as one by one they took turns standing in the centre of some of the habitation areas. They would move slowly and then stand in some sort of meditative state. When finished, each person left the area totally emotionally drained and in fact in some cases down right distraught. They were clearly involved in some level of mysticism we couldn’t appreciate and to be quite honest, we found the entire spectre, slightly creepy.
We quickly bypassed this group and moved on to the rest of the tour, which brought us past numerous stone carvings of Mehnhir warriors dating back at least 4000 years. Along
with many other amazing groupings of rocks, like the dinosaur above, we found the entire site fascinating. We did, however, get a little cosmic ourselves by the end of the tour.
Following our awakening at Filitosa, we drove to Ajaccio, the capital of Corsica and began our search for a hotel. We didn’t have to look far, since the first place on our list, The Imperial, had a room for 3 nights. The Imperial was right on the Mediterranean and about ¾ kilometre from the centre of town.
After settling in, we set off to explore the town and find an internet café. We stopped for lunch along the water for moules frites for Dawn and entrecote frites pour moi. We haven’t experienced much English in Corsica, so we found it a little humourous as we were lunching, when we heard a Brit pass by saying, “I’m not eating any more flamin’ squid.”
The architecture in Ajaccio is very striking and the views from town to the mountains beyond is equally awesome. There are also some not so shabby cars in this town like the Austin Martin below.
We succeeded in our internet café quest and posted the previous edition of this blog, then walked the streets and I bought a new pair of jeans. Dawn can’t shop this quickly.
Before dinner, we walked the other way down the beach from the hotel. Several sections of beautiful sandy beach run along the edges of town.
For dinner tonight we chose the pizza truck that was parked just down from the hotel. It had a wood burning stove and produced an amazing pizza with crème fraiche, ham, mushrooms, cheese and olives.
Tuesday, we arose to more startlingly azure skies and promises of more summer like temps. Today’s goal was to travel back to the interior, this time the central interior, to the town of Corte. This is probably the only town of any size in the whole interior of Corsica and probably for good reason. It is only 80 kilometres from Ajaccio, but that trip took us close to 2 hours. It was, however, an amazing drive and the peaks in this area exceed 2 kilometres.
Corte is quite picturesque and we found numerous tour buses parked at the base of town. The Petit Train was carting them all up to the Citadel at the top of town. This was not a tour we were interested in so instead we started driving up the Restonica Gorge road.
This was definitely another one of those “Is this really a two way road?” roads that wound up into the gorge, with steep precipices on the edge of the road. Dawn wasn’t really happy, especially when she found herself on the gorge side of the road and her brake foot was working over time. Even she will admit, however, that it was a spectacular drive. Along the way we stopped for a picnic at one of the few pull offs along the way.
On the way back down the gorge road we encountered more domesticated animals roaming the roads – this time cows. Clearly, the cows needed to travel large distances to find enough chow and the easiest route was – of course – the road.
There was no choice but to return to Ajaccio on the same road – not a lot of alternative routes possible on this island. We took a slightly different route through town, however, to get to our hotel and discovered the suburbs. I think I’ve already said it, but this is a very beautiful city.
Before dinner we took another walk along the water and around the citadel, which as it turns out is still an operating fort – no tours here. We continued into the heart of the city and thought we’d check out the location of the Fesch Gallery, which apparently has the best collection of impressionist art aside from the Louvre in Paris. This is because Cardinal Fesch from a couple hundred years ago was famous for having looted all these art works from elsewhere. Classic! It’s temporarily closed due to renovations.
We also had a nice walk around the marina which had a large percentage of operating fishing boats – not sure what their catch might be.
For dinner this evening we chose a restaurant on the beach that had a wood burning stove and specialized in items that might do nicely on that stove. Dawn had gambas done in papilotte and I had a lamb shank from the rotisserie. We loved our meal.
As it turns out, our hotel does indeed have wi-fi, but the older lady at the desk we asked didn't have a hot clue - too much new technology.
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