The Corsican Adventure-Part deux

The times that Frank and I have traveled to Europe we usually get a few Euros from our bank in the US and then withdraw a larger amount(s) from the ATM at the airport of whatever country we are traveling to, it is a better exchange rate if you do it over there. This time was no different.  I can't remember how much Frank exchanged here, about 100 euro or so which I think is more than usual but we did have layover at two airports in France and one has to eat and drink.  Our layover in Paris just gave us enough time to get our passports stamped and run the entire length of the airport to our connecting gate so this was not the place. Our layover is Marseilles was another story, 3 hours and 55 minutes, with not a heck of a lot to do in a very pretty, open space airport. Frank walked around and found no ATMs, you had to go outside so we decided to wait until we arrived in Bastia.  By the time we arrived in Bastia we had been up for more than 24 hours and on several planes.  We felt reinforced by the fact that all of our luggage had arrived at it's destination and were eager to get this adventure on it's way, so we ran across the lot to the Europcar lot, picked up our Citroen and off we went.  We had our dinner at the restaurant in the hotel, which is a separate business, and it was time to pay.  We didn't have enough Euros so we gave the adorable waitress a credit card, out she came with her machine and inserted it, it didn't work, another card, same thing, my cards, same thing.  We ask her to call the other waitress who seems more experienced, she tries, same thing, she stares at the card- "oh, it's a swipe card", their machine doesn't have that option.  The nice French couple next to us explains how American cards swipe, European insert and not all businesses have a machine that does both since it costs money "You are in a very different France here, they prefer cash".  Luckily we are staying at the hotel and promise to have cash tomorrow, they are very gracious and the food is delicious.
 

The next day is Sunday which concerns me. Our village is on the side of a mountain, I doubt there is an ATM, Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday, let alone Sunday. We ask the woman at the desk, one of two who are both new to us and after much sign language and gesticulating she says "L'ile Rousse"! Only 20 minutes on the D13. Off we go and find the silver lining on this cloud.

The bluest Mediterranean beach in a bustling little town just ---yes---20 minutes on the D13, one of the best and easiest mountain winding hairpin turn roads yet! And, in addition to plenty of ATMs 
they have an open air market to boot!

We vow to return to that beautiful beach and step foot into the Mediterranean for the first time.

Luckily on our jaunt over to the ATM we found that the village of Pigna is right off of the D13, which is very convenient since we are having dinner there this same night.

U Palazzo sits on a cliff overlooking the Mediterranean, the sunsets are spectacular and so is the food.

The village itself is quite the draw, extremely charming with tiny little cobblestone streets and beautiful views from everywhere, 

but then again that is Corsica. 

Referring back again to "The Pillars of Hercules", Theroux writes how Corsica has only a "couple of good roads and many bad ones but all are spectacular".

I would have to agree.

The Corsican Adventure

I remember a conversation from many years ago. We were visiting some friends at the guy's father's lake house when the tenant who lived in the first floor of the house came by to say hello; he had just returned from vacation, a jaunt through several European countries. I don't recall which ones he visited but what I have never forgotten is that when asked which place he liked the most a soft smile spread on his face and his eyes just started to gleam - "Corsica"! While starting to plan our vacation earlier this year we started out a bit clueless with not much in the way of ideas- --anything we brought up was met with a shrug of the shoulders and little or no enthusiasm. Then all of a sudden a flicker of memory came into my head, Corsica! soft smiles spread on our faces and our eyes lit up, Corsica it would be.

We already knew that Corsica was an island between France and Italy just north of Sardinia, 

that it had gone back and forth between the two countries for years and has been owned by France since the 1700's and that Napoleon was from there and they have their own language, Corsican, which is an old Tuscan dialect; it sounds like a bit of French and a bit of Italian. However, very few people actually speak it, most speak French, some also speak Italian. We also knew that it was basically a big granite rock in the Mediterranean with a very menacing interior and beautiful beaches- What we didn't know was how not much fun it is to get there. From where we live it is either Newark to Paris Charles De Gaulle airport, then from Paris Orly airport to Bastia, Corsica. The problem with that scenario is that every combination we saw gave you one and one half hours to get across Paris from one airport to another on a shuttle which you had to pay for yourself even though it was the same airline and recheck your baggage, in Paris traffic this seemed an impossibility and principle told me we should not each be paying 25 euro to get from one airport to the other when the airline was demanding it. So the other option went like this: Newark to Paris, Paris to Marseilles, Marseilles to Bastia and this is the way we went. We arrived in Bastia somewhere in the early afternoon and picked up our rental car, no GPS, they don't offer it. Thankfully we had our piles of printed Google Map directions so off we went on the N193, which we were relieved to find was a good and picturesque road on a busy Saturday afternoon with a bit of traffic.

All our research indicated the roads were bad, rugged through windy hair raising mountain turns, this was not that at all -----at least not for now. What was supposed to be a one and a half hour drive to our destination, the mountainside village of Feliceto, turned into a nerve wracking two and a half hours of white knuckle driving and stopping frequently to ask the locals who don't speak a word of English (and my French being high school crappy at best) for directions- We finally felt better when in the village of Costa we spoke to a shopkeeper of gourmeish looking stuff and he very decidedly said "12 kilometers"! 12 kilometers is 7 and a half miles, it took 40 minutes. Here is where we arrived:

Luckily we had had the foresight to email and ask for a dinner reservation for that evening at the bed and breakfast's restaurant which is next to the pool

underneath the grape vines that go over the pergola.

The adventure had begun! 

We went to bed exhausted in our utterly charming room with open windows letting in a cool soft mountain breeze and slept like logs. I woke up in the morning to what would become my daily alarm,

eight bells coming from the village church, my window view to the left, my window view to the right was a neighboring mountainside village

and the granite mountains of northern Corsica. After breakfast I took a walk around the gardens

and the village

in search of the famed Mediterranean maquis of Corsica,

which consists of a fragrance coming from the wild rosemary, lavender, myrtle, honeysuckle, cyclamen and pines that just permeate the air with a sweet soft aroma.

In Paul Theroux's "The Pillars of Hercules", his grand tour of the Mediterranean, he writes how Napoleon left Corsica as a young man (undoubtedly to conquer the world) and never returned. He was exiled and spent his last days in the Italian island of Elba but when the breeze flew East he could still smell Corsica, so can I.

Sunday

On the weekend I always make the bed first thing, something I don't always have time to do on the weekdays....Max thinks otherwise.

Apparently I'm only passing through his house. Oy!

Change in Climate

It's been a strange Summer, I suppose just as strange as the Winter in some respect. At first it seemed so nice, no extreme humid heatwaves, nights when we could sleep with the windows open and no air conditioner running...in July and August no less. Cool breezy days, my hair behaving every single day, wow! But then I noticed my basil, which had grown to about a foot tall, all of a sudden turned a light green with some brown on the leaf edges, the leaves drooped sadly and dropped off a bit, the tomatoes are few and far between, still small and green to this day when I should have been picking bushels by now. Frank didn't mow the lawn for two weeks and no one complained, including me. We barely sit outside as we usually do because it's either cloudy or cool or...I don't know what, and dry I guess. Then last night it rained, buckets of it. Parts of Long Island got 13" in two hours, I can't fathom such a thing. It seems its either feast or famine.

My flower bed by the side of the back porch is blooming like mad

including the wildflower seeds I just threw in to see what happened,

so far this, I think it's a zinnia, with promises of more to come atop 2 foot tall stems. Making up for the herbs and tomatoes I guess. It all feels a bit odd, somethings not right. Robin Williams decided to leave this earth yesterday and someone I am "friends" with on facebook proceeded to bash him endlessly by saying he didn't understand depression and that he was a coward, this is a person who's entire family I've known, and know that manic depression runs in it. Where is the humanity and compassion? I kept my mouth shut and shut down his feed.

There is a climate change in many ways. It scares me.

I dream of being in faraway places.

Summer reading and eating

Crossing my fingers, toes and eyes. I am soooooo enjoying this Summer. The temperatures have been on the coolish side with little humidity, no horrible heatwave yet...yet. I'm sure it will come but in the meantime we'll wallow in perfection. The threat of Arthur didn't materialize much so the Fourth of July celebrations weren't ruined and it falling on a Friday has made for a glorious three day weekend. I am also cautiously ecstatic because I seem to have emerged from my long reading rut and hoping to start tackling the ever increasing piles and getting through entire book. The one that brought me back was "Gone Girl"; not a particularly good book filled with extremely unlikable characters but I rushed through it because the genius of it is that you need to find out what happens. At least I had to. So now I can graduate to better fare. I started the new Andrea Barrett short story collection "Archangel". I love anything she writes usually having to do with the earth, the sea, the land and nature. I've read the first one and since they are short stories I can enjoy them by reading one here and there while picking up other material in between. After that a collection of short stories by Fyodor Dostoevsky awaits, a bit heady for Summer so maybe it will be Fall before I get to it, there's plenty to choose from before then. A friend though suggested what I am finding to be an irresistible joy! "Mediterranean Summer" by David Shalleck. An autobiographical account of a chef cooking on a huge yacht which is cruising the Mediterranean one Summer. I am transported to the South of France,

and craving an Aioli platter

which consists of boiled potatoes and vegetables; I used green beans, artichoke hearts, carrots which I marinate in a little olive oil with some salt and pepper. Quartered tomatoes, same marinade. hard boiled eggs and poached cod served at room temperature with a heady garlic mayonnaise, Aioli,

made with 8 to 10 garlic cloves minced in a food processor with a pinch of salt, the juice of one lemon and 1 1/2 cups of olive oil drizzled in slowly in a steady stream with the machine going. This is one of my all time favorite dishes and perfect for beautiful Summer evenings.

And for dessert scrumptiously creamy vanilla bean ice cream.

I love cruising the Mediterranean!

Even if it's on dry land.