We sailed into the Ajaccio, Corsica harbor this morning to sunshine and blue skies.

 

 

I seem to remember the weather was just as nice three years ago when, along with 3/4 offspring, our ship stopped here on a 7-day Mediterranean cruise. We were on the MSC Lirica for the simple reason that we could embark in Majorca. Both the dates and location were important since I had timed the cruise to coordinate with George’s office’s annual Ausflug which just happened to be in Majorca that year. It started the day after the cruise ended, and thus the reason for dates, location and ship. I had only looked at Costa and MSC having been on both lines several times without problems. The only cruise I had taken to this point on Royal was the disaster the previous year on the Brilliance and NCL didn’t have a ship that offered Majorca as embarkation point (hello? Someone else is paying the airfare, why wouldn’t I want that advantage?) (the 25 June 2011 post is here 

 

Anyway, Corsica. I spent the day hiking around the city. There were a lot more tourist type shops than I remember from the last time. Of course, the plethora of English Speakers off this ship didn’t really help. Taking care of the postcards early on, I decided just to walk up a few hills to see what I could see.

 

Besides several lovely gardens, mopeds and motorcycles where ever their riders felt like leaving them,

 

I found (on the way out through the pedestrian security gate) that I had managed to walk through the regional government headquarters complex.

Once again I didn’t manage to get to the Palace Fesh- not just because in typical French fashion the opening days and hours are fixed (never mind having a few thousand tourists who just might add money to your coffers) but the last major exhibit closed on the 12th…

The occasional shop (postcards up front), local markets and the outside of several museums were all fair game.  After enjoying the scents from the spice vendor

I bought a kilo of cherries to eat on the way back to the ship. Since I paid only a Euro more than three years ago I figured it was actually a good deal, completely refusing to calculate the inflation (in double digits).

Mudville

The England vs Uruguay match just ended. Not a lot of happy campers here.