60. Cote d'Azur - Cannes

It was an 8.00 am departure for the ferry crossing from Ajaccio, Corsica to Nice on the Cote d'Azur.

Five and a half hours later, after quite a rough trip, we returned to the Bay of Angels.

Despite a temperature of 32° there was no swimming off Paul's favourite rocks near the port of Nice this day.  Too dangerous: a strong, hot wind creating a big chop and the red flags were out.

And despite the well-intentioned but once again, ill-informed lady on our SatNav taking us through the middle of the Nice shopping precinct at 2.30pm on a Saturday in order to access the Autoroute, we managed to make the 30km drive to Cannes in good time and met our next host, at our next apartment, at the appointed hour.

We have a miniscule but extremely well designed and well equipped apartment, looking at the sea on the Boulevard du Midi to the west of the city centre of Cannes.

The owners claim the apartment is 30 square metres but Paul thinks it is probably a bit less.  But because it is so well designed it has a full size kitchen and bathroom, a full width terrace and an adequate living area.  However, there is no suitcase storage and the bedroom is ..... well ...... cosy!

The queen size bed is exactly the same size as the room. That's cosy!

I don't know how we missed this when we booked - probably very careful photography.  But Paul has wrenched his hip and my knee is playing up and we are too old to crawl across each other for night time trips to the loo.  So I have slept here for two nights and Paul has used the excellent sofa bed in the living area (albeit without sheets). 

Our tiny apartment

I have just checked the website for the apartment - click the link above, select the flag on the top left, then turn the pages on the bottom right. It would appear that the big bed can become a single with a trundle underneath ..... I might try that, then we could have one sheet each.

We face south-east with nice gardens at the front. This is the view to our right and the town of La Napoule.

And to the left, looking towards Cannes, Antibes and the two Lérins islands. That is an enormous cruise ship you can see on the horizon, a little left of centre.  And if you look carefully, on the footpath underneath the centre light pole is the tiny figure of Paul, walking to the beach for a swim.

Alas it is another unpleasant day - very windy and 34°.  I'm inside with the air-con where it is a very pleasant 20°.  We came here with plans to visit the ancient town of Antibes, the Musée de la Mer which includes the prison of 'The Man in the Iron Mask' and is on St Marguerite island, the ancient Abbaye du Thoronet and the Musée Renoir in the medieval village of Haut-de-Cagnes. 

Time will tell what two limping old crocs can manage in the heat.

59. Corsica - Real Corsican food

A few years ago, Yotam Ottolenghi, British based chef, food writer and restauranteur made two television series about Mediterranean food.  Both were shown on SBS TV and one was called Ottolenghi's Mediterranean Island Feast.  

One of the islands he visited was Corsica and one of the restaurants he visited and cooked in was Chez Séraphin, in Peri, located in the mountains inland from Ajaccio.

Corsica is a bit like a national park where nothing much changes, except in some of the camping sites.  A few of the prettier camping sites have grown into towns with little planning and even less foresight.  But here in Peri, things have pretty much stayed the same as they have always been.

 

For Paul and I, Chez Séraphin was a beautiful reminder of the Italy and France we discovered on our first visit to Europe, back in 1998 and which rarely exist now, in 2015.

Back then it was common to see rock and stone and wood used as they had always been used - to create a garden.

To find shady terraces in the most unexpected places.

 To see plants cultivated and treasured for their habit and perfume and fruit.

To have trees valued and protected. 

 To appreciate sun and shade and know how to manage both. 

To enhance nature's beauty rather than remove it.

Alas, this is the first time on this trip we have come anywhere close to seeing something that is part of "the old Europe".  And sadly, it is only 17 years since we were first enchanted by many, many places like this one.

And so to lunch .......

We found our table set with floral cloths, mismatched china and extra cushions on the chairs. We even had a laid serving table.

There was no menu although we were asked our preferences for a couple of dishes - the vegetable course and the dessert.

We began with home made charcuterie and home grown tomatoes.  The meat was cured, air-dried ham much like prosciutto, home made salami and a meatloaf, much like a paté. Served with olives from the orchard, gherkins from the garden and bread from the oven.  I don't know about the butter.

There is no shortage of bees here! They descended on us as soon as the meat appeared. But they don't eat much and it was only when I nearly swallowed one that I broke out the citronella.

Then the local deterrent appeared - a smoking dish of some type of tree bark. Very effective.

Next up - battered zucchini flowers.  Delicate little pillows of air.  We demolished the plate so fast that they brought us more!

The next dish had been a choice. Paul chose cannelloni with meat.  Home made pasta with a sauce of crushed fresh tomato and a little meat paté inside.  Light, airy, delicious.

I chose a farci of vegetables with a little meat stuffing.  Zucchini, green capsicum and tomato - barely cooked, with a hint of fresh crushed tomato as a sauce. Yum!

I was wondering if I could possibly eat another thing when I saw the lamb come out of the wood oven.  

So, after a toilet break, a circuit of the terrace and some conjecture about the one dark cloud over the mountain, we settled in for the next course.

Perfect local mountain lamb with nothing but a few cloves of garlic and some Corsican herbs.  A plate of fried potato slices which, Paul says, is very traditional with a roast in Italy, and a salad.

Salad is also very traditional with roast meat.  This one was so fresh I double checked the lettuce for snails. The tiny leaves on the top were called 'popiere' according to our young and exceptionally cool waitress.  But despite Paul's Google searching talent, we can't discover anything about it.  It was used in the same way I use aptinia - a succulent ground cover with pretty coloured flowers, a bee-attractor, with a nice peppery taste.  Great as a salad enhancer as it was here.

And rather than a small plate of cheese slices, we were offered the whole board!  Plus more bread! Help yourself! Two local goat's cheeses and four local sheep's milk cheeses.

And finally it was dessert.  We had been asked at the beginning of lunch whether we would like dessert and given a choice of different types of charlotte.  I chose the chestnut charlotte.  It was the most delicate of cakes, sliced, brushed with a light liquor syrup and joined with chantilly (cream) and fresh chestnut puree from local roasted chestnuts. Wow!

Paul had 'charlotte chocolat'.  The same as mine but without the chestnut puree and smothered in an intense, not very sweet, dark chocolate sauce. He almost inhaled it.

Paul and I are both big eaters, but I don't know how we managed all of this.  Needless to say, neither of us ate again for 24 hours.

Coffee came in mismatched cups and saucers with an ancient, ant-proof, beaten aluminium (or tin or silver) sugar bowl.

We were sitting back, patting our overstretched tummies and complaining about the heat and humidity, when the little black rain cloud that had floated across the mountain .......

.... suddenly drenched everything.  Thirty minutes later - clean mountain air!

Good food - real food - local food.  Hard to find these days. We've been very, very lucky to  be able to come here to Chez Séraphin!

58. Corsica - Bonifacio

After an "easy day" in the Corsican capital of Ajaccio, we continued our journey south to re-visit the island's third, smallest and prettiest port, Bonifacio.

Our 'easy day' in Ajaccio included a 70km round trip to Peri (where else but up in the mountains) to find a restaurant that we saw on SBSTV and to see if we could make a reservation.

The restaurant owner was so nice, that when we said we had seen her on television and come all the way from Australia to eat at her restaurant, she gave us a free beer and let us sit on her beautiful, cool shady terrace, even though she was closed.

And what a terrace it was!

Possibly the most beautiful I have seen - stone walls, stone paving, shaded by pine and plum trees and planted with Corsican herbs, fragrant gardenia, fuchsia and hydrangea.

Although in 34° heat the assistance of numerous umbrellas was required to keep the temperature under control.

From the cool, quiet terrace in the mountains we went to the hot, noisy beach. Paul had a swim while I read my book and watched these very skillful, very fit and very verbal young men play soccer-volleyball.

At 7.00 pm the whole dynamic of this place changed.  The entire under 40's beach culture went home, the bar staff knocked off, the food staff came on duty, and with the help of some stylish place mats and glasses, the beach-bar shack morphed into a restaurant.  So we stayed for dinner.

The next day we continued south to Bonifacio, the jumping off point for Sardinia and the southern most part of Corsica.  On the way Paul filled our water bottles at the natural spring in the mountains near Corsica's main water bottling plant, St George. Lovely water.

Accommodation was almost impossible to get in Bonafacio, even six months ago (January 2015) when we booked this hotel.  So we had to take a ridiculously expensive room with a wonderful view of the marina, directly above the waterfront restaurants.  The cheap and moderately priced accommodations always go first - what remains gets more and more expensive.

This was an extremely busy and popular port for pleasure boats.  We walked around the harbour in blistering late afternoon heat looking at the citadel on the cliff top.

I'll get Wikipedia to help me here with a photograph of the cliffs and some information about the town:

"The southern coast of Corsica, around Bonifacio is an outcrop of chalk-white limestone, precipitous and sculpted into unusual shapes by the ocean. Slightly further inland the limestone adjoins the granite of which the two islands, Sardinia and Corsica, are formed. 

The port of Bonifacio is a drowned ravine of fjord-like appearance separated from the ocean by a finger-like promontory. In prehistoric post-glacial times when sea levels were low and the islands were connected, the ravine was part of a valley leading to upland Corsica. The maximum draught supported by the harbor is 3.5 meters, more than ample for ancient ships and modern small vessels.

The city of Bonifacio is split into two sections. The old town, on the site of the citadel, is located on the promontory overlooking the Mediterranean. The citadel was built in the 9th century and included the original city. The Citadel has been reconstructed and renovated many times since its construction and most recently was an administrative center for the French Foreign Legion. Today it is mostly a museum. Historically, most of the inhabitants have resided in the new town on the harbour, under the citadel. The harbour facilities and residential areas, la marine, line the narrow shelf of the inlet and extend for some distance up the valley.

The fortifications also extend for some distance along the cliff-tops, which are at about 70 meters elevation. The cliffs have been undercut by the ocean so that the buildings, which have been placed on the very lip of the precipice, appear to overhang it. The appearance from the sea is of a white city gleaming in the sun and suspended over the rough waters below." 

A close-up look at that weathered limestone in a parking area behind some buildings in the marina.

Another eroded hill, behind the Capitainerie.

The main square in the lower town has just been repaved and is very handsome.

Spotted this three phase water filter on one of the bigger boats.

We finally escaped the heat in a waterside watering hole and watched dozens of small craft berth at the marina in the late afternoon.  This town is the only "upmarket" spot in all of Corsica and both physically and ecologically, it is stretched to the limit.

In the late evening, just before sunset, this huge private yacht backed (because it was too big to drive in and turn) all the way up the harbour to tie up at the Capitainerie.  And like every the person in Bonifaccio that night, we walked up the quay to have a look at it.  

So big and so luxurious, it was almost obscenely decadent - a rough estimate from the locals calculated that the annual running costs would be about $5 million per year. 

57. Corsica - The East Coast to Ajaccio

Leaving the cows and the dust of Galéria, it took us another day of mountain driving to travel south down the west coast of Corsica to reach the capital Ajaccio.

First we crossed the peak of Palmarella at a healthy 405 metres, half the height of Kosciusko.

The peak offered great views of the Gulf of Porto and the mountains ahead of us.

Even at this height the temperature was still a wilting 33°.

An hour and 27 km later we wound our way down to the ancient harbour town of Porto.

Porto is a tourist hot-spot with its UNESCO listed fortifications and lighthouse.

Between Porto and Piana, which is one of the 'Most Beautiful Villages of France', we came across Les Calanques.

A calanque is a narrow, steep-walled inlet that is developed in limestone, dolomite, or other carbonate strata and found in many places along the Mediterranean coast.  

The horizontal line in the photo above is the road, extensively propped up and very narrow.

Once the calanque nears the water it becomes sheer cliffs plunging in to the sea.  But we are not able to see that from here.

Rugged.

Theres the road again. Not a white post or safety rail in sight although there is a low rock wall - but only in places.

We managed to get our car off the road to get these photos. The road is barely two cars wide and in places the cars crawl past each other.  This is why we averaged about 30 km per hour along much of this coastal area.

Finally crawled into Ajaccio the capital and main port, in time for tea.

But alas it was Monday.  Most restaurants in France are closed on Monday.  That meant that the local pizza shop near the hotel was closed.  That also meant that if we took the car out to go further afield to find a restaurant, we would loose our parking place. Parking places are like gold - once you have one you are disinclined to give it up.  So we ate at the hotel. It was appalling - everything frozen, thawed and microwaved. 

Never mind, there is always tomorrow and we are off to chase down a restaurant in the hills,  featured in Yotam Ottolenghi's 'Mediterranean Island Feast - Corsica'.