Porto Vecchio

If this sounds Italian, it is because it is! We keep wanting to say Ponte Vecchio which is in Florence but it is Porto Vecchio. These Corsicans have much much more in common to the Italians than the French. On the map, it is 10 km from Sardinia which is Italy. No wonder they resent the French and there is a Nationalistic movement at foot. The signs often have the French names graffitteed. Revolution is brewing!! Mind you, if Napoleon was Italian, it would be very unlikely that the Italians would have followed him on his battles as the last time Italians were fighters was back in the Roman times. Now they are all hand waving lovers!

2 hour drive to the seaside town of Porto Vecchio which is like any Italian Busselton but with more history and style. We checked into a Bed and Breakfast type hotel which was quite nice. It was clean and it did the job for the night. We stopped at the old town to check it out. It was quite touristy and one can imagine that it would be heaving with people in a few weeks when it is high season. Professor Google tells me that the population of Porto Vecchio is usually about 10000 but swells to 40000 in the summer. WTF. Where do all these bastards stay! the local specialty is smoked ham and we found a ham and cheese shop. There was hundreds of ham hanging from the rafters. Very expensive if you want to buy a whole leg. These hams are from specially farmed black pigs (am I allowed to say Black and Pigs in the same sentence? Will I lose my job even knowing how to say black? Will twitter going a meltdown? Blah blah blah) feeding on chestnuts.

The pigs are done in at 1, 2, 3, 4 years old. Then the hams are cured and smoked for a further 1, 2, 3 or 4 years. The older the ham, the higher the price. I made the mistake of asking if this was similar to the Spanish Jamon. I was lucky not to be neutered on the spot. As an aside, Corsicans love knives, little ones which are easily hidden in pockets. After laughing nervously and placating her that I was just stupid Japanese tourist, she calmed down. This was explained to us by a porky lady who obviously owned the establishment and love pigs. We bought about a hundred grams of a 2 year old ham for dinner tonight. Harry sniffed out the Boulangerie (French for bakery, please note the French translation) and bought the requisite baguettes. Harry has largely fulfilled his pledge to consume a metre of baguettes a day. A quiet achiever is our Harry.

It was pretty hot and we all retired for the afternoon snooze. After that, we walked the 80 m to the beach and had drinks at the Le Bar Plage, which translate to the Beach Bar. Shit, my French is coming along nicely, what. We had a brought a lot of food and a bottle of wine and we had a picnic whilst watching the sun set over the inlet. Beautiful. Unfortunately, Harry’s impression of a goat on the rocks resulted in a slip and he sustained a small cut in the foot. Health conscious as he is, he has been taking low dose aspirin and predictably started to bleed like a stuck Jamon (spanish for ham and also probably pig). More to come of that little episode. All good and in bed by 2100 hrs