June 26th, 2004- We arrived in Ajaccio.
Cindy wading in the Mediterranean on our first day in Corsica. Cindy's luggage spent an extra day in Paris. Luckily, Air France returned the luggage before the hiking portion of the trip began.
A beautiful vine in a park directly across the street from where Napolean Bonaparte was born.
Sarah sitting on a bench in Ajaccio. On our first stay in Ajaccio, it was very empty. It got progressively more busy each time we stopped at the beginning, middle, and end of our trip. Sarah thought that the men behind her were speaking Corsican (which is supposedly a lot like medieval Tuscan).
Random alley in Ajaccio.
The main boulevard in Ajaccio, Blvd. Napolean.
To begin our hike, we took a little rickity train up in to the mountains to Corte. From Corte, a taxi picked us up and dropped us off in Caluccia in the Niolu valley.
In Caluccia, we stayed at a former convent.
The convent had a chapel and the second night we were there there was a concert of four men singing Corsican polyphonic music. The music is fiercely beautiful and the harmonies are ancient and atonal.
Typical Corsican countryside.
A rock formation with a big nose.
We thought that this formation looked like a lion.
Sarah relaxing on a rock formation as we climbed higher.
At last, the top of the mountain.
View from the top of the mountain.
A little town at the bottom of the mountain. We wanted to stop and get ice cream, but this town was basically empty except for a few elderly folk. A lot of interior Corsica was like this.
There are a lot of feral farm-type animals. Pigs were especially common and sometimes we'd see entire pig families running around.
There were also what appeared to be feral cattle.
This donkey was wandering around the main drag of the village with out any sort of concern that perhaps wandering around a village was not a normal thing for a donkey to do.
The convent's cat.
Cindy setting forth on the second day of hiking. The ridge on the right was what we climbed the day before.
An old chestnut mill (with cow). Corsica used to be so poor that the inhabitents couldn't afford to buy wheat. Instead, the inhabitants would grind chestnuts to make flour.
An old genoise bridge. As conquerers came and left, they often left some mark of their occupation.
