9-Arles to Corsica

Dear Friends,

The biggest challenge to visiting Arles was learning how to pronounce it the way the French do. The beginning  vowel sound is "ah," followed by a rolled "r" and ending with "l." If  you say "ah," but then suddenly someone grabs you round the throat as you are producing the consonants, you'll just about have it! In any  case, Arles has a most remarkable collection of Roman ruins, around which a  delightful modern city has grown. We started our visit with the impressive theater, moving on to the extensive baths, and then a  wonderful museum, containing sculpture, tombs, and mosaics. We finally  visited the monstrous showplace: the arena. One could readily imagine  the bloody entertainments held there some 2,000 years ago before  thousands of spectators sitting on the stone tiers. Or one could attend  an equally bloody modern equivalent, a bullfight, fiercely popular here  in this part of France.

From Arles (do you have that pronunciation down pat now?) we struck out early in the morning for a long journey to coastal Marseille, from which we planned to take the ferry to Corsica. Our Michelin maps are generally excellent--accurate and thorough. But they unfortunately cannot make recommendations as to suitable bicycling routes. We are  pretty savvy in figuring out terrain and traffic density, but this Saturday morning we still weren't sure about our route, nor even if we could make it in one day. We'd stopped at an intersection to try to come to a decision. Enter a local bicyclist, out for a morning ride with his wife, both strong cyclists and international marathoners. He understood enough of our questions to say to us; "Follow me." We did. He led us around a few turns to an ideal secondary road; and later his wife added a perfect recommendation for getting us well toward Marseille. Saturday afternoon traffic was considerable in the outlying communities of this large port city, but fortunately it was quite easy to follow the route, always downhill and always toward the city. At last we saw the huge  ships in dock, wound our way toward them, found the ticket agent, and  bought our passage to the island of Corsica. Whew!

We've always loved traveling by ferry with our tandem. This time we got  to board early, and staff directed us to an area especially designed for bicycles. We unloaded our food, books, air matresses, and toothbrushes for the overnight ride, and a guy from the ferry secured our bike in the hold of the ship. We were fortunate to get to the public deck early, so we grabbed a table by the window. Leaving Marseille in the early  evening gave us a stunning view of the city, and then of the Chateau  d'If, on the tiny offshore island, best known as the prison setting for  Dumas' tale, The Count of Monte Cristo. Shudder. We were safe and sound in our floating hotel, enjoying watching the sun set, then the  people wandering to and fro. We ate our evening meal, had a couple of  cold beers, slept fairly well, and then woke to look out toward the rising sun on the island of Elba, where Napoleon was exiled.

Sunday morning is not the best time to land in a new place. Tourist  Information was closed, as were most shops. We did peek into two of the interesting churches before the Palm Sunday services got under way. Then we wound up a steep incline to have a cup of coffee before setting out to find a campground. We did learn that day, and in the week and a half  we were in Corsica, that April is early for tourism. In most cities only one campground was open. But all we needed was one; and as long as we could find it, we were OK.

On this day we struck out at a couple of sites listed in our guide book, but then we found an open grocery store. The clerk told us there was a campground up the road a bit, although a customer didn't think it would  be open. We took off with as much hope as we could muster, and "Voila."  It WAS open! After setting up, we cycled back to the market for food and wine. There we first encountered the aroma of French smoked sausage. After I write you one more story about our adventures in Corsica, I'll tell you more about delicious cheese and sausage here in France. That'll get your taste buds going!

Love, Ellen and Lowell