Ajaccio

Have you ever heard of Ajaccio? Neither had I until I saw it on the itinerary, and even then I had to keep checking back because the name would not stay in my head. It's a resort town on the island of Corsica, where Napoleon Bonaparte was born. It's part of France, our only French port of call. For some reason I associate Corsica with pirates, and I suspected that the Corsicans think about France the same way that the Sicilians think about Italy. I also expected to encounter the famed French arrogance.

Well, not so much. I didn't have an excursion, I just walked off the ship for a few blocks (my arthritic knees refused to allow much more) and was charmed. The town looked charming. The vendors in the little crafts market were charming, and that's not just because they wanted to sell me something. OK, it was maybe partly because they wanted to sell me something, but I have been in a lot of situations where people were trying to sell me something over the past few months, and none of them charmed me like the Corsicans. I found a ring I wanted to buy -- little bits of amber set in silver like four-petaled flowers -- but the merchant only took Euros in cash, a limitation which he communicated with diplomacy and, yes, charm. He gave me directions to an ATM, agreeing to hold the ring for me until I got back, and as I walked there, I watched the people around me being charmingly Gallic and no one ever was snooty or unpleasant in any way. It seemed like a place I wished I had more time in.

And now the idea of spending time in France is beginning to appeal to me. How weird! I have nothing in common with France. I can't tell one wine from another once it's in my mouth, I prefer Rachmaninoff and Shostakovitch to Debussy and Ravel, and Corsica isn't even mainland France!

Oh well, we'll see how the rosy glow weathers. But I had a lovely hour in Ajaccio.