2004 Europe

Ocana Village, Corsica



May 6 – Today we are in Ajaccio, Corsica, France the birthplace of Napoleon Bonaparte. Corsica is the third largest island in the Mediterranean. It is very hilly and rocky. We’ve signed up for two tours today, one in the morning and one in the afternoon. The tour we originally wanted in the morning was cancelled due to the depth of the new snow in the mountains. They said we wouldn’t be able to get to the spots we were supposed to visit. Heather, the Shorex manager selected another tour that she thought would be close to that one but it did not go as high. The captain told us he had never seen snow on the mountains of Corsica in the month of May.



We left the rain in the city of Ajaccio heading east. We followed the Prunelli River up the Prunelli Gorge. At first the vegetation was lush and green but as we climbed it gave way to dramatic granite cliffs with sparse vegetation. The road was very narrow and winding. That complicated matters for the vintage car rally that was heading west. Many times they had to back up to let the bus pass. There were old MGs, Morgans, Mercedes-Benz, Alpines, BMWs, and some cars I couldn’t identify. Most of the unidentified cars had Italian styling and could have been Alfa-Romeo’s. When we went through the mountain pass to the eastern side of the range, the rain stopped. We stopped in the small village of Ocana (above) for a break and had coffee. The houses are mostly made from blocks of the local granite. Corsica has 28 colors of granite but some are too soft and crumbly to use in building. The colors I saw ranged from green to red to gray to orange. A really strange one had a blue tint. We stopped at Lake Tola (below) for some pictures. A hydroelectric dam that produces a major part of the islands electricity created the lake.



In the afternoon we toured the city of Ajaccio. Our first stop was at the Napoleon Bonaparte Memorial (below). It’s a pair of marble staircases with wide marble slabs set in between. These marble slabs are engraved with Napoleon’s various events and accomplishments. There’s a list of his great battles won, no mention of Waterloo, of course. Two large eagles engraved with the year of his birth and death guard the foot of the stairs. At the top is a statue of him in his trademark pose with the characteristic hat and his left hand in his shirt. We left Ajaccio proper and went out to a point where we could view the Sanguinaires Islands. They are a small chain of islands just off Corsica to the west that form a protected nature reserve. Depending on which story you believe the name is derived either from the red plants that grow on the islands giving them a blood color in the summer or from the fact that watching the sun go down over them makes people happy. You pick ‘em. Also out at the point nearby were the remains of a watchtower that the Corsicans built in the 1400s to warn of approaching pirates or slavers. The guide said the towers used to ring the island, but now only a few remain.



Then it was back into town for a walking tour. The two most interesting places we visited were the house in which Napoleon was born and the Ajaccio Cathedral. He was born in 1769 and the chair his mother sat in while she was in labor is there as well as his bed. The cathedral (below) was built in the 16th century and is rather plain inside and out as funding was scarce in those times. The font that Napoleon was baptized in is there as well as the pew his mother was sitting in when she went into labor. The locals are quite proud of their connection with him and have preserved his home and relics very well. After that we walked through the old city streets to Charles deGaulle Plaza where there’s another statue of guess who, no not deGaulle but Napoleon, this time as a younger man when he was Proconsul. After some shopping around the plaza, it was a nice walk back to the ship.



This evening’s entertainment was Tony & Donna Buonauro. They sang a variety of styles from opera to Broadway hits. She was trained in jazz style; he has an operatic background and sings with various opera companies in the US.

(c) 2004 Rod Longenberger