Prego! We are travelling the most convoluted journey of the trip. For some reason, flights from Northern Corsica to Italy are very rare so, we opted for ferry and trains. What could go wrong? Well….. the signposting in the ferry terminals meant we put in around 800 metres of unnecessary lugging of luggage, the ferry from Bastia was delayed which meant we missed our connecting bus and direct train journey from Livorno, where we docked. No matter, a taxi. We cau...

I’ve decided to put the last two days of Corsica on to the one post; not laziness on my part, more to do with the trip being a little more of the same and, I’m being economical with space. Corsica is half the size of Wales, maintaining that Celtic theme, an eighth of Ireland. Despite its size, I expected a population into the millions. With 4 international airports, two big cities etc seeming to support my theory, however, it’s only 340,000 in number. I ca...

Balzac wrote Corsica is “ a French island basking in the Italian sun”. It’s given us Christopher Columbus, born in Calvi, now the sort of tourist town which would make you want to travel and explore elsewhere and, a little more recently, Napoleon. It has its own language, a hybrid of French and Italian, Franglian? I suppose that, a unique culture and accent makes the independence argument more emphatic. Natalie, our host, is a lot more amenable this morni...

After the perfect evening, time to move on. The delightful Camille, our hostess at the hotel, Delaney Mars in Puligny Montrachet, made us a pain perdu for breakfast. One of the rooms was called Pain Perdu and we had talked of Monica Galleti, of Masterchef fame, loving them. She didn’t know how to, just You Tube’d and off she went! The journey to Lyon airport takes around 90 minutes, we were talking about how it is inevitable that with trips of this length, t...

When I started to develop an interest in wine, Puligny Montrachet was one of the first wines that captivated me. I say a wine, it’s a village that makes wine in the centre of other villages, also making world renowned wines, like St Aubin, Volnay, Meursault, and Chassagne Montrachet. I’ve visited most of the world wine hot spots but, never this one. It wasn’t difficult to twist Angelka’s arm even though we were both underwhelmed driving towards the area. ...