Thursday, October 10th - Day 30 - Ajaccio and the Napoleon Bonaparte Museum

 The weather outlook on Thursday was promising so we decided - after our usual slow morning of checking email, news, and having a breakfast of yogurt, fruit, and muesli - to set off for the city of Ajaccio to see what it was all about.  The city's claim to fame - if you could call it that - is that it was the birthplace of Napoleon Bonaparte, the military emperor of France who stepped in to end the chaos of the French Revolution a couple of years after it had gone off the rails. Then he led the French army to conquer much of continental Europe.  Of course, he met his demise at the hands of British admiral Nelson in the Battle of Waterloo in 1815, and ended his life in exile on the Italian island of Elba, just off the Tuscan coast.

So much for the history.  We arrived in Ajaccio without incident after retracing our route out from the airport.  Ajaccio is a cute coastal city that serves as the terminus for two ferry lines from France (both of which had ferries docked on the waterfront).  The waterfront was dominated by a towering cruise ship - the Virgin line's Scarlet Lady." 

We explored the huge market beside the wharf - produce, cheese and charcuterie were the main things on offer.

Amazingly, we found a parking spot (though stay tuned!  This ALMOST doesn't end well at all!) right in the historic downtown by the "marchee" where the cruise ship was moored.  We walked around the market - bought some glorious swiss chard for dinner - and then headed around the historic downtown to get a feel for the city.  LOTS of American tourists everywhere - and a couple British accents were heard.  When we got back, Munroe looked up the itinerary of the cruise ship and found that they had started in Marseille, stopped in Toulon, on the Tuscan coast of Italy, here in Corsica, and were headed next to Ibiza, a Spanish island of that country's coastline, and then back to Marseille.  Surprisingly, many of the cruisers were having lunch at the city's many restaurants and not on board.  Perhaps the food on board wasn't up to snuff!!  

We found a post office and Munroe tried to send the large Lonely Planet French guidebook back, along with some of the brochures we'd accumulated in our travels.  The staff were pleasant and helped him with the high-tech self-service postal machine but after entering all the details the cost for shipping would have been 48 Euros.  The cheapest alternative was 18 Euros - about the cost of the book when new.  So needless to say we didn't complete that transaction, and now this experience has me wondering if we'll ever see the Irish guidebook that we sent back from Menton for about 8 Euros!!

We walked for quite a while looking at various restaurant options - all were in the 18 Euro range for lunch and we weren't inclined to pay that - or were we that hungry to eat a big meal.  We finally found a nice cafe across the peninsula that the city sits upon and looked out over the coast to the south of the city instead of the marina.  We split a charcuterie platter and enjoyed that with the ubiquitous baguette! Now we were ready for the museum. 

The museum is spread over 3 floors - each room restored to what it might have looked like in the late 1700s.  Deb loved the lovely painted ceilings and walls - to look like the wallpaper of the times - the tiny room where Napoleon was born with the chair that carried his mother in labour.  It was interesting enough - had a short queue to get in and managed to get in front of one of the cruise ship's tour groups! The tour was in English so we could pick up a bit of the details!  Napoleon only lived in Ajaccio until he was 9 years old when he was sent to mainland France for school. Then, later, he stayed in one of the bedrooms before the Egyptian campaign (his actual short bed on display).  

We returned to the car, arriving precisely when our parking meter ticket was expiring at 4pm.  We were greeted by 2 stern-looking gendarmerie - one busily entering our vehicle details in his mobile phone. It didn't look good!  "Stationment interdit, ici" (or words to that effect, were their greeting for us!  Fortunately, they spoke English and we explained that there were no 'no-parking' signs, that there was a sign indicating that payment for parking was required, and we'd complied with that, and that we got the last available spot in a long line of parked cars (also, apparently, breaking the law!!).  They were unmoved by our explanation and told us that we'd blocked in a woman for 40 minutes!  Not sure that this was exactly the case, however, as she obviously was able to get out before we moved the car, and one of the two officers went across the street to continue with his data entry - quite an involved process!  We assured them several times that we were genuinely sorry.

They asked for Munroe's driver's license and had a hard time understanding it. We were somewhat reassured by knowing that we could settle our accounts online. Munroe helped him decipher the address, his name, etc., as he was inputting it in the mobile.  He had entered "Etats Unis, US" as the country and didn't change it when it returned an error.  Munroe suggested that he remove the 'US' but he didn't.  When the second attempt to submit the ticket to the system returned an error code also, the officers looked at one another and said to us:  "This is a warning.  We will not issue you a ticket today." With that, we all shook hands and we drove off!  Dodged a bullet there!

On the way back to our temporary home in Serra di Ferro we stopped at a large Carrefours market in Porticcio to pick up some supplies - especially meat since the local selection is uninspiring. To our amazement, we got two packages of lamb pieces on sale (11 Euros each), among other things.  Putting the groceries in the car, Deb headed to the local Boulangerie/Patisserie and Munroe to the Poissonerie that were in the same vicinity.  Deb returned with a nice whole wheat baguette and a loaf of bread that she had them slice; Munroe returned with a 'Dourde Rose" - which he had scaled and cleaned there. 

A nice day in all, despite our brush with being fined for breaking the law!!  We got back to our place around 7:30 and enjoyed a lovely lamb dinner with fresh swiss chard and pan-roasted potatoes, washed down with some nice Corsican red wine!