You might recall our efforts to locate A SIM card yesterday morning. Well after some early afternoon quiet time to eat lunch in our apartment and nap we decided to have another go. Annemarie had done a bit more research (bless her heart) and discovered that a store a couple of kilometres away might have a useable SIM. Never one for missing out on an exploratory walk I agreed that we should have a look. So somewhere around 17:00 we set off with just a photo from Google Maps to guide us. You can perhaps sense the jet lag effect in that we neglected to take our city map map with us!
In any event, we set off on what eventually became a long walk into the outskirts of Ajaccio. After walking along the main road which shadowed the extended harbour we eventually arrived at our destination. Inside we spoke with a helpful person in the tech department who on learning of our need for a SIM card referred us back into the city to visit the Orange mobile dealer. 🙄 After explaining our morning misadventures at Orange and elsewhere he helpfully expressed his dismay with the stupidity of our situation. We all sagely agreed that our situation was indeed grave, but not yet impossible. He too suggested that we visit a business in the industrial zone much further out of town, and expressed genuine concern when he learned that we didn’t have a car as it was some 7-8 kms out a very busy highway. We thanked him and departed. I
We were already aware of his suggested option, but an earlier phone call by one of the folks at tourist information had gone unanswered, so the assumption was made that the business was closed Mondays, a not unusual occurrence in France. She explained that we would need to take bus #2 from town. I suggested that we go into a chain coffee shop to see if they had free wifi so that we could look at the bus app Annemarie had downloaded to try and sort out the route. The app was pretty useless, but my research indicated that the business we need to get to was actually open until 21:00. So I again spoke to the young woman behind the counter who referred us back to the bus stop just outside her shop.
It’s worth mentioning at this point that very little English is spoken here. So far just bits and pieces which when combined with our minimal French can lead to some interesting outcomes!🤣
At the bus stop I’m thinking that we must be on the wrong side of the highway. Using my limited French I ask two people also waiting for a bus about this. They had no English, but were both very helpful and pointed us in a direction behind us where we could apparently find bus 2. We thanked them and set off. On arriving we figured out that this was actually the domain of bus 4, so we keep walking to the next bus stop where I took a photo of the bus routes. We wanted the blue route heading direction ’A’. We logically decided that if we walked away from the water that we should easily bisect bus route 2. (refer to location 1 on map below).
We never saw the blue route🙄, but we had a nice hike uphill to location 2 on the map. Realizing that it was getting late (the clue was the sunset) we decided to look for a place to eat as we walked back towards town. We walked back a different way and descended at point 3 on the map. We were really off the tourist trail by this point and definitely seeing another side of Ajaccio.
We eventually worked our way back into the city core passing a huge ferry getting ready to depart for Marseille on the overnight run. The signage is the name of the local Corsican beer Pietro and it reminded us that we were getting somewhat parched!
We continued walking on to point 4 on the map in the city core. We hadn’t found a suitable place for dinner and at around 20:30 we ended up at the restaurant where we’d eaten the night before. We were both hot, starving and very thirsty!
I’m drafting this in the middle of the night. Not much sleep for me as the shift in time zones and possibly the late beer takes a toll. In a few hours we will be up with plans to try and catch bus 2 to find the elusive SIM. I’ll finish this post later.
Noon:
Ummmm, well things happened a little differently than we thought would happen. We both had a tough night, but thankfully we managed to sleep a couple of hours right at the end. I woke at 9!
Over a simple breakfast we remembered that there was another cellular provider in town called Bouygues. It was closed yesterday when we arrived at their door. We decided to take a chance on our way to the bus 2 stop, and low and behold they were not only open, but they had a 30 day prepaid 20G plan. Perfect! Covers 3G and 4G, and while slow when 3G, it will help.
We celebrated our good fortune by going for a lovely coastal walk westward from town. Really beautiful!
It was toasty at about 26° (11 am), but we didn’t really care. It was wonderful to walk along side the med watching boats come and go as well as the planes taking off from Ajaccio.
We walked a while then returned the way we’d come in search of a cold drink.
A cool drink looking out across the sea was pretty nice! We stopped at an Italian restaurant called Via Roma (very original name) that Annemarie is particularly interested in trying out and I made a reservation. We bought some lunch to enjoy at our place while waiting out the worst of the heat and we will head back out perhaps for a swim before dinner. Annemarie is itching to get into the water!
I’ll report back on dinner tomorrow. That’s about it for today from Ajaccio, Corsica 🇫🇷
Distance Walker - Wandering & Wondering! 