Wild Corsica and Le Tour de France

Corsica.  It's not France.  Well, it is France, but really it's not, it's Corsica.  Welcome to the island of identity crisis.  Despite the legal ownership of the island by the country of France, the inhabitants of Corsica generally seem to view their connection with France as more of an association than a belonging.  So, while they speak French, and generally have the same laws as the mainland, the lifestyle and values of the people are entirely unique.  To complicate it further, Italian is generally accepted as the second language of the land, and appears on most street signs and tourist brochures.  Given the island's proximity to Italy, this does make sense.  So what we end up with is an unusual Mediterranean mix roughened up with the flair of a secluded, proud, and minimally developed island.

And it's beautiful.  The entire island is full of natural wonders.. The center of the island is full of mountains and forests, and aside from marked hiking trails and a couple of roads that travel between the main cities, it is largely untouched.  The outside is encircled by shallow beaches mixed with rocky formations and steep cliffs.  Even if nature isn't your greatest interest (like me), it's hard not to be impressed with scenery in Corsica.

View from our hotel balcony

We spent four days on the island, and only saw a small fraction of what it has to offer.  Aside from a bustling food and wine business, which tends to stay mostly on the island for it's inhabitants, tourism is the main industry.  But that doesn't mean they have allowed the regular influx of foreigners to spoil the authentic wildness and culture.  While they gladly accept and often cater to tourists, they still expect that visitors will do things their way and work with them in order for everyone to have an enjoyable experience.  We spent the majority of our first day inland in the mountainous terrain.  Sneakers laced up and prepared with water, snacks, and sweaters (it's cold in the mountains!) we set out on a short hike to the Cascade d'Anglais.  Within minutes of leaving the gravel parking lot, you are in total seclusion and surrounded by nature.  The hike was only about an hour, and that's at a pretty slow pace.  And here's our waterfall!

The water was clear and fine for swimming, but FREEZING cold!  So we just dipped our toes in.

On the way back to the hotel we passed this little restaurant.

Now, everyone from Texas knows that eating Tex-Mex outside of Texas is a bad idea.  But we just couldn't resist...

Kerry got a "margarita"

And we shared a plate of fajitas, notice the pronunciation

They had some interesting ideas of what Tex-Mex food is supposed to taste like.  Let's just say, we didn't go back.

We stayed near the city of Ajaccio [Ah-jax-ee-oh], which is most famous as the birthplace of Napoleon Bonaparte.  From what little I remember of my history classes in school, I always thought Napoleon was kind of a bad guy - greedy for wanting to take over everything and rule the world.  But in France, he's a hero!  They love him around here - he helped grow the French empire!  And you can see this devotion all throughout the city of Ajaccio.  There are streets, buildings, statues, and landmarks everywhere named after him, and you can even do a tour of the house where he was born and raised, which has now been turned into a museum honoring his life and reign.

Our stay in Corsica also coincided with what is probably the largest sporting event in France - Le Tour de France!  This was both really neat and really irritating.  As it turned out, the finish line for Day 2 was just over 1 kilometer from our hotel, so we were able to easily walk to end of the race a few hours ahead of time and hang out.  Everyone else had to park at least 5 kilometers away, since they close all the roads for cyclists, so we were thankful for our good fortune.  We made an afternoon of it and arrived just in time to snag one of the last front row spots just 50 meters from the end.  No matter where you go to see The Tour pass, you will almost definitely have a few hours of waiting to do.  We found the wait much more entertaining at the finish line, where they had food booths, a merchandise vendor, a giant TV screen with the race on, music, and lots of people all excited to be there.  The atmosphere was much more lively than if we had gone to a random spot on the side of the road, as many people do, and we really enjoyed it.  The problem came the next day.  The cyclists were scheduled to depart around noon from the center of Ajaccio.  What we didn't realize that was starting at 6 A.M., every road through and out of the city would be completely blocked off.  We couldn't get out!  It doesn't help that Corsica only has about 4 roads to begin with.  We had planned to head to the south of the island for the day, but had to find other arrangements because there was absolutely no way around it.  Fortunately, there were pretty nice beaches across the street from our hotel, so we managed all right.  But lesson learned!  When The Tour is in town, don't plan on going anywhere.

We spent the evening after The Tour hiking The Iles Sanguinaires, an archipilago on the outskirts of Ajaccio.  They are famous for giving off a blood-red color during sunset.  We had the islands almost completely to ourselves, and it was very relaxing to sit atop a rocky hill in the middle of the ocean while the sun went down - the scenery felt very movie-like - but we didn't really see the islands magically turn red like we expected. Even so, it was one of my favorite parts of the entire trip.

I've saved the best for last.  They are Corsica's crowning jewels and the real reason thousands of visitors trek to Corsica each summer.  I'm talking, of course, about the BEACHES!  They are some of Europe's best, and even your snootiest beach-goer will have trouble finding something to complain about here.  No matter where on the island you are, you won't be far from fine white sand and clear, shallow, turquoise waters.  They have beach clubs and restaurants here too, if that's your thing, although they aren't nearly as fancy as the ones in St. Tropez.  If the buzz of beach clubs doesn't do it for you, keep driving past the touristy parts of town, park the car and hike for a few minutes, and you might just find a little cove of paradise all to yourself.  In fact, we often found that with little effort, we were able to claim large stretches of sand just for us.  Not a bad way to spend vacation!                          

Corsica photos can be found here.