The day got off to a good start as when I woke up Ton looked at me and said we should wash some clothes while we are here. She then sent me out to look for a laundromat. I scouted the main road in front of the hotel, and just as I was about to give up, I spotted a laundromat in a little strip mall walking distance from the hotel. So we gathered up our laundry in François and by 10 am had our laundry done. To celebrate our logistical victory we stopped in a Boulangerie and bought a nice French breakfast.
Ajaccio is the birthplace of Napoleon and his name shows up on many of the buildings, streets, and businesses in downtown Ajaccio. We spent a good part of the day walking from one memorial to Napoleon to another and finally to the street where he was born and raised. He last visited his boyhood home in 1799 and never returned as he became Emperor of the French and then went into exile after he was defeated at Waterloo.
Beside being the birthplace of one of the most famous Frenchman ever, Ajaccio is also the capital of Corsica. But it is a nice compact city that is easy to move around in. The city is surrounded by mountains in 3 directions and the ocean in the fourth. It is a beautiful setting for a city.
Sundays are usually pretty low key in France, but the waterfront in Ajaccio was humming and the unseasonably warm weather had all of the cafes full. We enjoyed walking around and noticed that for the first time in a long time we heard nothing but the native language of the town being spoken. We can’t remember the last time we went a whole day without hearing either English or German being spoken by a significant percentage of the people. There were so few tourists around that all of the people we needed to talk to just assumed we were French until we proved otherwise. It was fun.
We noticed that the market was open, so we made a bee line for it as most things grocery related shutdown around 1 pm. The market is always a happy place for Ton. This was a good one with a great variety of foods.
The food looked a lot like what we saw in Sardinia. Great looking seafood, a lot of smoked meats, and cheese primarily made from sheep. There were vegetables and fruit available, and while nice were not up to the quality and variety we saw in Sicily.
Ajaccio was a great introduction to Corsica. The natural setting of the town is beautiful, the people looked happy and prosperous, and the food looks like it is going to be a treat. Even the Corsican beer we tried at one of the cafes was a cut above anything we have had since we left Belgium. We are excited to begin digging in to Corsica tomorrow after we take care of our technical inspection and make François legal to drive again in France.
