Still in Corsica

Corsica: We were brought to a local winery high in the mountains with gorgeous stonework and a beautiful view of the water below. They offered a white and a red wine and a non-alcoholic lemon drink. Citrus fruits abound on Corsica. Virginia has to add sugar to her lemon drink because it was really sour. Still, something different.

I had red wine and them sampled a white as well. I wish I could say one was better than the other, but frankly I didn't like either. The town was laid out in terraces, with a lower and higher level. I thought about climbing a long flight of stone stairs, but I had been having some muscle cramping problems and decided I had been doing well enough on the hills without tempting the fates. In other words, I chickened out and let my wife do the stairs. She chickened out three-quarters of the way up.

We also visited a local church in the town of St. Antonius. Everything was very ornate even for a Catholic church. They celebrate a lot of Holy Days in Corsica with long processions winding up the steep roads. The people must be in very, very good shape.

On one of the mountain tops there was a shepherd's cottage, completely made of stone, packed on the interior with mud to keep out the draft. Actually it was quite warm inside even though there was a stiff breeze outside. And, of course, it was dark. Too dark for photos. It was at that point I wondered if they had poisonous snakes on Corsica.

I had to climb a wire fence to get a look inside. It was a national historic site and the guide said it would be all right just to take a quick peek. Funny but when you go into places liek that you get a sense of time and dimension you don't feel in the present. I could almost feel the vibrations of those who had lived there, a simple dwelling, a single room, a singular purpose in life, merely to survive from day to day.

I cannot say we were unhappy to leave Corsica because without time and a car the tourist is limited to the small village. Still, there were enough stores with most unusual items to keep one happy and the market itself was a hodgepodge of stands and rows with all kinds of fresh fruits and vegetables. One of the fruits, the prickly pear, I had not seen in years. It is the fruit of the cactus. They were in bloom all over the island and I well remember them from when I was a child.

The fruit is beet red in color, shaped like a small football with blunted ends and black pebbles all over the skin. I remember the pebbles because if you grabbed the pear in your hand it gave you a nice set of stingers that took forever to work themselves out. The wound felt more like an abrasion than a sting. So you grabbed the fruit by the ends and peeled it with a sharp knife, discarding the skin, and then enjoyed the pulpy, juicy fruit within. Not to worry though. If you forget and grab one in your hand, you won't do it a second time. Promise.

And it is a tasty fruit and worth the risk. Sweet, a little pulpy and blood red inside. Occasionally I would see them in supermarkets in New Jersey, but I have never seen them in Kentucky. And before I forget, we saw the prickly pear on just about all of the islands we visited, some just there for the taking except they weren't ripe just yet. It depends on the temperature etc.

The markets had all kinds of cheeses, fruits and each merchant had something open that you could sample. It brought back a lot of memories seeing that because in my yesteryear (around nine or ten years of age) I visited a lot of grocery stores and markets with my maternal grandfather. He was a businessman selling imported products to them.

The merchants always cut a slice of something for me. It might be a baloney or prosciutto (ham), Genoa salami or provolone cheese so sharp it made your glands hurt when you bit into it. It wasn't so much a custom to see if you liked their wares but rather a kind of pride these men took in giving you something that was, in their opinion, a part of their heritage.

So, they sliced something with great pomp and artistry and waited while you sampled it and signaled satisfaction. And, of course, they had to give you a crusty slice of Italian bread along with it to augment the tasting experience. Odd, and sad, that such a wonderful art should be lost in our high speed world today.

There may be such places still in Europe today. I hope there are. Despite the fact that we enjoy technology, it would be sad if all the old world things that really mattered were suddenly to be no more. And perhaps, here and now, I am recording for history, something that was ... and may never be again.

We leave Corsica this trip and head to the Italian Riviera I'll discuss in my next blog. Hope you are enjoying the trip along with us.