Our first day on the trail is spent hiking to Miage.
Today we left Miage to hike to the nicer La Balme.
We're in Nice. It is a lovely town with a spacious seaside promenade, charming narrow streets, and tempting sidewalk cafes. Staying a while would be fun but we've a ferry to catch tomorrow.
Today we took the awkwardly-named but otherwise fine Mega Express 4 ferry from Nice to the island of Corsica where we disembarked at the town of Bastia. This ferry is one of many that connect the island to continental France. It's one of the faster crossings at six hours whereas our return crossing, from Ajaccio to Toulon, will be an 11 hour overnight sailing.
And hello to Corsica ...
And hello to Corsica ...
And hello to Corsica ...
Bastia is a hilly Corsican town, squeezed between the Mediterranean and the Serra di Pignu, a 960 m (3,150 ft) mountain. Bastia has a charming and walk-able old town (assuming you don't mind stairs), with many blocks of fashionable stores and cafes. Though Ajaccio, our next stop, gets more attention in the guidebooks, I preferred Bastia. It is just as charming and is less touristy.
Two highlights were the Vieux Port and the Terra Nova neighborhood. The Vieux Port or old harbor is chock-a-block with boats. It is ringed by cafes. The Eglise St-Jean Baptiste towers overhead.
The Terra Nova neighborhood features a citadel, the Cathedrale Ste-Marie, and great views of the city and the blue sea. The citadel was built to satisfy the city's Genoese masters many centuries ago.
Today we caught the train to Ajaccio. The narrow-gauge train, officially called the Chemins de Fer de la Corse, connects Bastia to Ajaccio and Calvi (along with many points in between, of course). It's quite a scenic train trip as it winds through the mountainous center of Corsica.
The photos from the train suffer a bit because the train was moving and the windows were dirty and scratched. There is only so much that a high shutter speed and polarizer can fix.
Today was a day to explore Ajaccio. After espresso and pastries from the patisserie across the street--I quickly became partial to ambrucciata--we walked along the waterfront, hit the farmers market, ate some charcuterie, and took in some 16th and 17th century art at the museum. Ajaccio is easy to get around, everything is within a few blocks from our apartment, and the sidewalks are overflowing with cafes.
About a half-hour north of Ajaccio is the Tower of Parata, or Torra di a Parata in Corsican. It is an old stone structure sitting on top of a rocky hill. The tower, one of a series, was built around 1550 by the Republic of Genoa to defend against attacks by Barbary pirates.
In the far right you can just make out the outskirts of Ajaccio.
If I'd been clever I'd have positioned something in the photo for size relevance, like a person or an umbrella, but in light of that omission I'll say the tower is 12 m (39 ft) in height, so about 3 stories, and it has a diameter of 7.3 m (24 ft) at the roof.
In the far right you can just make out the outskirts of Ajaccio.
If I'd been clever I'd have positioned something in the photo for size relevance, like a person or an umbrella, but in light of that omission I'll say the tower is 12 m (39 ft) in height, so about 3 stories, and it has a diameter of 7.3 m (24 ft) at the roof.
In the far right you can just make out the outskirts of Ajaccio.
If I'd been clever I'd have positioned something in the photo for size relevance, like a person or an umbrella, but in light of that omission I'll say the tower is 12 m (39 ft) in height, so about 3 stories, and it has a diameter of 7.3 m (24 ft) at the roof.
While it isn't exactly the GR20 (the 180km trail stretching the length of Corsica from Calenzana to Conca), the Chemin des Cretes, or Path of the Ridges, provided a scenic hike in the green foothills above Ajaccio with glimpses of the city, its beaches, and the gulf of Ajaccio.
Stretching from Calenzana in the north of Corsica to Conca in the south is the famous GR20, a challenging 180 km trail. It takes at least two weeks and involves, among other challenges, ladders and ropes and rocky scrambles. I'm sure it's a wonderful trek but sadly we didn't do it. Instead, today we did the much much shorter Chemin des Cretes (Path of the Ridges) that starts about a half-hours walk from our central-Ajaccio apartment.
The best-known way to explore its interior is the challenging 180km GR20 one of the most famous walking trails in Europe. It stretches from Calenzana in the north to Conca in the south and is considered one of the most difficult long-distance treks on the continent (there are exposed scrambles, and at some points ladders and steel ropes to assist walkers). The whole thing takes at least two weeks, and involves staying in refuges or camping along the way.
Ajaccio itself is flanked by green foothills covered in an aromatic carpet of vegetation and herbs. Beyond them, a rocky ridgeline dramatically pierces the sky and below are beaches of golden sand.
As I headed up through suburban streets to the trailhead of my chosen route, the Chemin des Crtes (Path of the Ridges), I passed statue after statue of Ajaccio's most famous son Napoleon Bonaparte. Given the hero worship of this leader, the fighting spirit of its eco-activists begins to make sense. The route begins opposite the Bois des Anglais, a patch of woodland left over from the island's short stint as a British colony over 200 years ago. At less than 10km it's a much easier prospect than the more famous trail, but as it cuts along the peaks above the coast it offers stunning views for very little effort, and you can finish up with a very civilised drink in a bar in the seaside village of Vignola.
Who could blame them? With the full extent of the gulf of Ajaccio revealed, and the Iles Sanguinaires creeping out onto the horizon, my gaze, too, was fixed out on this tiny rocky archipelago, that breaks off from the mainland at Pointe de la Parata. They're called the Isles of Blood because of the reddish colour they reflect into the sea.
You can get a good look at the islands' wind- and spray-scoured shapes on another, shorter, walk here. Take the number 5 bus from Ajaccio to the start of the waymarked path (in the car park) and it's a 40-minute round trip to the end of the Pointe de la Parata peninsula. Come in the early evening to avoid the tour buses and watch the light play as the sun sets.
So far, all signs are that it was just a guy, just one more American killer who got his hands on some collection of weapons designed for the sole purpose of killing people, and who then killed people. We know that if it was a Muslim with a foreign name, we would be in full panic mode and all we would be hearing about is the ever-greater dangers of terrorism. Indeed, the killings in France, on Sunday, which were surely terrorism, have already begun to attract that kind of attention from the right wing here. But when it happens here, what we're told by the entire power structure of American life--both houses of Congress, the White House, and now the Supreme Court, locked and loaded to sustain the absurd and radical pro-gun ruling in District of Columbia v. Heller--is that there is nothing at all to be done, save to pray. Adam Gopnik in The New Yorker
This morning we picked up a car, a small white Citroen, at the Ajaccio airport. We then headed north, to spend a few days in a beach-front hotel in the small seaside town of Algajola.
We picked the scenic route, via Piana and Porto. It is a twisty, two-lane road the whole way, except where it narrows to one lane. It took us through pink-granite canyons along narrow roads carved into rocky mountainsides, with scenery ranging from merely beautiful to spectacular. The only problem with photographing it was finding a place to park, the road being barely two cars wide in places, with a wall of rock on one side and a steep drop on the other side.
In addition to walking along the beach and watching the wind surfers here in Algajola we explored the nearby town of L'Ile-Rousse, a slightly larger (but still small) town. Just off shore, but connected by a narrow causeway, is a lighthouse-topped island called Ile de la Pietra.
