Monday, May 13
I woke up at 5 am to a mosquito buzzing in my ear, a good reminder to close the window and set the AC to work. Rising again close to 9, I packed up, and checked out. I stayed parked in the hotel garage: they hadn't validated whose cars belongs to who so I figured it'd be ok if I overstayed an hour or two.
From there, I walked the old town more in depth this morning and checked out the bastion. Sadly, the museum for Napoleon was closed on Mondays but I still enjoyed an easy morning milling around Ajaccio in the mild, sunny weather. There wasn't a whole lot to see inside the bastion but it'll be a formidable attraction once construction/renovation is complete. I spent the most time there inside a store specializing in cork (liège) work; per the photos on the wall, the workshop's origins lie in the cork factory in Porto Veccio.
Another ferry loading up for heading to some mainland port
With all of yesterday's festivities over, all that's left in this covered market place is a market full of local specialties and local produce. How passé 😉
An impressive open air display of cheese, it only smelled it a little like "dairy air"
I think it's funny how the little train (le petit train) is a touristic institution across France; it adds a je ne sais (pas) quoi to the guided tour compared to a double-decker bus.
One of the little plazas in the old town I'd missed during my night stroll; with the pizza place it's actually kinda hard to tell this was a plaza haha
The building Napoleon Bonaparte was born in, now a museum not open on Mondays.
Comment tu oses? I suppose the statement "water: good to drink" is still valid but a little misleading on a plugged up fountain.
The bastion was used by the Italians in WWII for imprisoning and "enhanced interrogating" dissidents and freedom fighters. One such person was native Ajaccian, captain Fred Scamaroni; at 29 years old, he infiltrated occupied Ajaccio but was caught and tortured. When he had the chance, he slit his own throat and managed to scrawl on the wall in his own blood "I didn't talk. Long live De Gaulle. Vive la France"
Imagine a bunch of privates out here on laundry day scrubbing away.
The courtyard of the bastion; the air was super relaxed in here. There weren't many people around, there wasn't all that much to do, but I liked the stuff put out for lounging.
This is the shop specializing in cork. They had whole sheets of cork out on display; I'd never thought of cork as a material for art before. All the cork within the shop was harvested on Corsica.
Probably best to spell it directly than out of many, many wine bottles corks. Interestingly, in French, the bouchon (plug) is made from liège but in English the material and the object are synonymous.
Like I said, I'd never seen sculptures from cork before; many of these were actually pretty cool. The surface of the cork tree varies between the sexes but the texture makes for a gnarly live edge.
The view from the bastion wall; surprisingly, only the tiniest section of the walls was open to view. Hopefully the place opens up more in the future
The weather was great: a mild sea breeze, light clouds to temper the suns rays, and 25C 👌
They had the area around the powder house open but it didn't really seem well kempt. The arches here made for a cool perimeter around the building but were more there to support against an explosion that simply style.
The swing door on the 2nd story must function like a safety relief valve: the wave of combustion gas slams it open and there's suddenly a direction for things to go. There were some cleaning ladies who passed by me to enter the powdery; again, I'm not sure what the deal is with this whole place. There's cleaning ladies with keys to the powdery but what is there to keep clean inside?
The addition of mirrors to the walls is an interesting choice; I guess it increases the place's libido albedo
I was a fan of the signs and lounging stuff they'd put up in the bastion; it was all made in this style using nautical equipment. I don't think it's upcycled/used equipment but the theme is still cool
Now they just need more people/stuff to make use of these structures
I'm not exactly sure how these people got down to this part of the beach; I'm guessing they either walked a long ways along the beach from the stairs off to my right, or they knew which signs in the bastion to ignore to access the beach.
This church more or less marks the edge of the old town. To the left of this is supposed to be a large plaza named for Charles de Gaulle but it was all under construction. Maybe they're building a subterranean parking garage as part of the new plaza?
Drying laundry is its own mood; this one stuck out since it crossed the whole street instead of simply spanning a balcony.
Ooh, a quiet little stairwell stemming off a busy road? Don't mind if I do.
That little stairwell led to a teensy tiny plaza with a couple restaurants and this tree exploding out of a stairwell.
Since I didn't have enough time to properly vet the art museum (Fetch), I made the decision to go see a Genovese tower up close. There is one located west of Ajaccio just next to the Sanguinaires isles, which was only a 30 minute drive away. Since my flight was scheduled for 4:30PM, I figured I had plenty of time to have a picnic lunch looking over the tower/islands and then be at the airport by 14:00. For the picnic lunch, I stopped by one of the many stores advertising "produits corse" where I picked up a vacuum sealed 80g of lonzo, a few beignets courgettes (fried zucchini balls), and some ratatouille.
The drive went well and followed along the shore. The parking lot was just a short walk away from a nice view of both the tower and the islands, I found a bench and had lunch. Then with my hands freed up, I made the trek out to the tower; sadly, the trail to the tower was closed (it didn't stop some people) but the trail rounding the point was still open. It was a short and sweet hike that revealed the main isle of the Sanguinaires to be quite large. I also noticed that the majority of the Genovese towers I've seen are in remote locations, building them must've been a real pain in the back and being stationed there could potentially be reaaaaaally boring.
I'm not sure what they're farming, but there were a couple aquaculture platforms off the shore out here.
A good view goes quite well with ratatouille.
Les isles Sanguinaires: they don't look bloody. The far island (mezzu mare) features a lighthouse, an old semaphore station, and a very old square stone tower. The closer islands feature: birds
It's so easy to take for granted how much labor must've gone into quarrying, carving, carrying, and placing the stones to build these towers. Then do that the ~80 times the Genovese put up perimeter towers around Corsica.
The walk around the point featured some clear water and a winding rocky trail; a nice relaxing promenade compared to some the hiking earlier this week and exactly what I needed. Also, it's surprising how different the vegetation is here compared to Bonifacio; could it boil down to the the stones?
The drive to the airport featured a good Samaritan pull up next to me in the left lane with his window open and shout out to me: "Bonjour! Votre pneu est dégonflé!" It took a few seconds to process while dividing my attention between my neighbor and the road but the 2nd time it clicked: my tire was visibly deflated. I thanked him and pulled off at the next gas station I saw. Fortunately, the road to the airport has no shortage of stations and this one had an air compressor. It didn't take long to find the leaky tire nor the leak. A couple minutes and bars gauge later, I was at the rental return. After signing the car back in, I pointed out the bolt puncturing the tire, the rental guy recognized it was definitely a leak source but said I was good to go.
So that's what that rhythmic clicking noise was when I had the windows rolled down 😂
Turns out the Ajaccio airport does things differently. I arrived 2 hours early but could see people were being turned away from entering the security check for being too early. I guess we reached the last flights of the day because all the check in desks eventually closed and there were just two large lines out of security. It seemed the plan was for one flight at a time to be sent through the check and conduct boarding; at some point in my life I'm sure I would've been stressed about missing the flight but current me figured there was 3 planes of people waiting to board and the plane wouldn't leave empty.
Once aboard, the flight went smoothly. I was surprised to see they offered inflight entertainment via wifi. Rather that watch something for an hour I took the opportunity to read about a few of their destination. Their review of Bordeaux spanned a huge area, basically all the way down to the border with Spain but it mentioned a town that might be worthwhile rendering a visit to.
I thought I'd arrived at the airport with only a slight margin, too bad it was a decent walk to the beach from here else I might have relaxed out there once we knew the scheme.
One of my stranger airport security experiences, for sure. At least they made sure we knew to board from aft if our seat row was >15. Adieu, Corsica!
Back in Bordeaux, I picked up my new rental car. I don't know if it's the season or the town, but my experience with the rental place at BOD felt waaaay more "upselly" than BIQ. But maybe that's just the way it is. Maybe I should ask my company for some reimbursement of my manual transmission lesson, booking the manual Peugeot saved $15 a day (x18 days = $270). That being said, the Peugeot is a pretty nice vehicle though I don't much care for putting controls behind the steering nor how they organized the controls on the console (hybrid of push buttons and touch screen). But there's a nice little slot to stick my phone for the GPS since the car's Android Auto refused to connect.
It feels very rare that I've driven a French mark during my time here
I opted to have dinner in Dax rather than picking a place at random in Bordeaux and then driving to the hotel after 10. Dining at El Meson (turns out I've eaten there many a Monday), the waitress let me have my aperitif (un Manzanilla). At the large table next to me, I was surprised to see some people were just having a large cup of sliced strawberries for dessert, I didn't know that was an option?! 😂
Here's a tapas I hadn't ordered yet at El Meson, deep fried anchovies
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