July 29 - Ajaccio (Corsica), France

back in France today

28 degrees, not a cloud in the sky, a bit humid

We start today with a walking tour of the old section of Ajaccio. The main attraction of this town is the fact that Napoleon was born here.

The tour starts directly from the boat, so no bus for us. There was a family on the tour with us with a boy around 8, he was

quite ticked off that there was not bus this morning. I don’t think he was much happier after the tour…it was a bit on the dull side for me…I don’t think he was loving it.

Napoleon portrait

We first wandered a bit through the narrow, zig-zagging streets, stopping here and there to hear about or look at something interesting – I have to say that there wasn’t much interesting at all. It is always charming to wander through the old parts of these small towns, but there was nothing particularly striking for me about this place.

There were a couple of beautiful beaches right in the old town, which were interesting…they even had sand rather than the stones most of the beaches we’ve seen recently.

We took a few minutes to take a look in the town’s cathedral and then continued on to the museum that is in the house where Napoleon was born. The most striking thing

death masks

at this museum for me was the 3 death masks of Napoleon – apparently it was the custom during the time of Napoleon to make death masks of leaders after their deaths.

We walked through the typical small town market as we have done a few times this trip…this is one of the most fascinating things that we do on walking tours. I like to see what they are selling and how much they are selling for. It seems to me that this place is pricy…maybe still less than home, but more than the last few places we’ve checked out.

cathedral

That was about it for the day, after a few days with little to no vegetables, we thought it would be a good idea to head back to the ship for lunch and load up on veg. The last couple of days our lunch timing wasn’t great. The rest of the day was spent relaxing.