Saturday, April 14, 2012

CORSICA, FRANCE—IMPRESSIONS

WHAT WE DID/SAW/EXPERIENCED
          ∙ Time in port: 7 hours
          ∙ I slept in until about 11 a.m. – nice!  Just in time for some “hair repairs” after yesterday’s downpour.
          ∙ Our tour didn’t start until 1:45 p.m., so we walked into town (Ajaccio).  Perhaps due to its proximity to the Italian island of Sardinia, we found as many pizzerias here as in Italy!  At lunch, the menu was half Italian and half French – so we had a little of both!
          ∙ We took a short (app. 2-hour) HAL bus tour out of Ajaccio, along the Route des Sanguinaires.
          ∙ We passed a number of white sand beaches and an interesting  local cemetery en route to Punta Della Parata.  There, we hiked to the top of a steep hill for some awesome views of the Iles Sanguinaires—four red granite islets marking the entrance to the Golfe d’Ajaccio.
ILES SANGUINAIRES
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SHORELINE
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          ∙ We stopped at the Cours Napoleon and Place de Gaulle, with its monument to Napoleon.
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          ∙ Back in town, we walked around and stopped at a local casino.  It was small and had few games.  They were even more unlucky than the ship’s IF you can imagine that.
 
THOUGHTS/IMPRESSIONS
          ∙ The best parts of this day were (1) sleeping in, and (2) the absence of rain!  It was cool at times, but the sun greeted us with moments of warmth, too.
          ∙ Corsica was pretty, but it wasn’t extraordinary.  There was a lighthouse.  There were pretty beaches and buildings.  Maybe I saw too little in the 5 hours we spent off ship.
          ∙ Cruising is a lot like wine tastings:  you don’t get a full glass, and certainly not a bottle.  You get great variety, but only a small “taste” (of each place).  If you like one a lot, then you have to come back for more later!  There are, still, two things that I love about cruising:  first, the blast of the ship’s horn when we leave a place (what can I say? – it’s cool), and second, waking up in a new place.  Last night, we went to bed with rough seas around Italy.  This morning, we were “beamed” into a sunny small piece of France/Genoa.

AJACCIO, CORSICA – FRANCE
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