We’ve been in Ajaccio, the capital of Corsica, for a couple days now. Another Mediterranean island means more cute towns, more biking, more beautiful coast lines, more spectacular beaches. So there’s not really much to add here. The weather is great, the food is (mostly) good, the views are wonderful. We’re annoyed with the hotel (really limited breakfast options and effectively no Internet access in the room), but somehow we’re still managing to survive. Thrive, even.

With that said, a few pictures from the area. In two days we head north and then meet up with Marc & David, friends from Canada, before going to Geneva to see more friends. We have a very social summer planned!

We’ve moved back into France. Bonifacio, a town of about 3,000 at the southern tip of Corsica, is a short ferry boat ride from Sardinia and is in fact the southern-most city in France. As a quick look at a map shows, Corsica is much closer to Italy than France and, in fact, was dominated by Italians for most of recorded history. But in the mid-18th century the Genoans (this was before Italian unification) sold Corsica to the French and it’s been French – with a significant Italian influence – ever since.

The historic importance of that transaction is enhanced by the fact that Napoleon was a native Corsican, born in Ajenccia just five years after the French moved in. It’s hard to imagine, had Corsica remained Italian, or gained independence as the locals were attempting, that Napoleon would have been as effective in waging war and trying to take over the world. Instead it became part of France, he was born French, and the rest is history.

The ride up from Sardinia was exciting, mostly because the approach to Bonifacio is so striking. The city is built on the top of white limestone cliffs that rise about 230 feet straight up from the sea, and the views were amazing. Then you come around a corner and see that the city is built on a narrow spit of land making it appear to be a pretty much impregnable location. A good place for a fort, which is what the upper part of the city still is.

We only spent a couple days here, but we filled them well. On our first day we rented a scooter to head up the island a bit to a spectacular beach for the day. Then the next day we hiked a couple miles to a very different and more secluded beach; for this, the hike was the primary excitement, better even than the beach.

So far, in our brief time back in France, two things stand out. First, it is so much easier to avoid bad carbs (bread, pasta, sugar) in Italy than in France. I know, who’d have thought that the land of pasta and pizza and risotto would be an easy place to avoid those bad-but-good carbs. But, as long as you just skip over the pages on a menu for pasta and pizza, you’re good. And at least in the parts of Italy where we’ve traveled since leaving the States last year, you order a main course and you decide what side dish you want with it. Here in France they’re constantly throwing french fries similar goodies on a plate. Strange.

The other difference so far is that public transportation here is a lot more costly and a lot less frequent than what we experienced in Italy. We’ll see how that goes over the next couple of weeks, but whereas in Italy we could always hop buses or trains wherever we wanted to go, it looks as though we may be renting a car to get around for day trips on Corsica. Yikes!

Marseille, settled by the Greeks as a trading colony called Massalia some 2,600 years ago, is France’s second city. Neither of us had been here before, and it was quite the eye opener. Just a short train ride from the very cute – chic, even – Aix-en-Provence, the minute we stepped out of the train station you could feel the change. It was almost as though we were no longer in France, though that’s a bit of an overstatement. Still, the links with the Mediterranean cultures of North Africa were palpable. At one point Mark was off having coffee at a café while I was in a park reading and he texted me “I am having coffee in the Middle East. I’m not that far from the hotel, but…”

One of the changes for us back in the West is that we’re acting more like tourists again – going to museums and churches, even shopping. So on Thursday morning we headed off to the Museum of the Civilizations of Europe and the Mediterranean, annoyed that it didn’t open until 11:00 AM (we’re morning people, and besides, in lots of French restaurants if you’re not in by 1:30 PM you don’t get in, so an 11:00 opening time is cutting it a little close). What do we discover when we get there? May 1, it turns out, is a big holiday in France. In fact, May 1 and December 25 are the only two days of the year when the museum is closed. That meant that most of the restaurants and everything else in the city was closed that day, too. What is with these people, don’t they ever work??

And then to add insult to injury, when we finally did go to the museum the next day, it was a big disappointment. Great architecture and great space, but way too broad and disjointed; trying to be a little bit of everything, it never really told much of a story about Mediterranean civilization.

The other big activity of our stay – besides meals, of which there were many great ones – was an eight- or nine-mile hike up in the Calanques, a rugged coastal area just east of Marseille and France’s newest national park. The bartender at the hotel where we stayed told us the cliffs were the tallest in all of Europe, and you can always trust your bartender, right? He was certainly right in that the cliffs were high and the views spectacular. It was a great hike until, nearing the peak, we noticed that the blue skies had all been replaced by clouds. Not long after, instead of a beautiful hike along the Mediterranean coast, we were being pelted with strong winds and a light but cold rain. Not quite idyllic any longer.

So that was Marseille. We never ended up having bouillabaisse. We learned that you either get a kind of crappy imitation, or you spend about $100 per person for the real thing. And then because of the May Day holiday, we couldn’t even get into the one restaurant we wanted to try it in (it was closed). Maybe next time.

From Marseille it’s onto a ferry boat for a 24-hour cruise down to Tunisia. Stay tuned.