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FRANCE TOURISM GUIDE (COTE D'AZUR & CORSICA)

Côte d’Azur

The Côte d’Azur, or French Riviera, is in the département of the Alpes-Maritimes. It runs along the coast from the Italian border, through Monaco, and continues to a point just beyond Cannes and reaches more than 50km (30 miles) northward into the steep slopes of the Alps, connecting the balmy coastal region with the ideal ski resorts of the lower Alps.

This part of the Mediterranean coast has more visitors each year during July and August than any other part of France, although many of the summer visitors are French. The two most famous French resorts, Cannes and Nice, are to be found here, and the area is one of the most renowned resort spots in the world. Over the centuries, it has attracted a lot more than tourists, with artists like Matisse, Picasso, Chagall and Dufy heading here. There is an abundance of palm trees, blue sea and beautiful beaches; sparkling cities and villages are set against backdrops of high green mountains. The weather is wonderful with long, hot and sunny summers. There is plenty of diversion here, especially in the spring, summer and early autumn months.

The coastal resort towns include: Cannes, made popular as a resort by Lord Brougham in the 19th century when, because of a plague in Nice, he was forced to stop here; Nice, itself, the largest metropolis on the coast, a thriving commercial city as well as a year-round resort (the annual carnival and battle of roses perhaps date back to 350 BC); Napoule Plage, a small and exclusive resort with several sandy beaches, a marina and a splendid view of the rolling green Maure Mountains; Golfe-Juan, now a popular resort town with many expensive mansions and hotels; Juan-les-Pins, with a neat harbor, beaches and pine forests in the hills which protect the village from the winds in both summer and winter; Antibes and Cap d’Antibes, very popular but expensive resorts; Villefranche-sur-Mer, a deep-water port which has been used by pleasure yachts and navies for centuries; St-Jean-Cap-Ferrat, an exclusive and expensive resort consisting of great private mansions and seaside estates; Beaulieu, much less exclusive, yet a fine resort town; and Menton (near the Principality of Monaco), once a fishing village and citrus-fruit-producing area, now a pleasant vacation resort.

Despite their reputations, there is no denying that the beaches at Cannes and Nice are poor, and many savvy travelers choose to base themselves at better spots like Antibes, which offers a combination of historic town center and accessible, good-quality beaches.

The Côte d’Azur is an extraordinary playground with every kind of amusement. There are excellent museums, historic places dating from the pre-Christian era to the present day, hills, mountains, lakes and rivers, gorges and alpine skiing trails. The entire area has a generous supply of good, comfortable hotels as well as luxury châteaux, restaurants with every sort of food, and good bars everywhere. One of the greatest museums in the world, the Maeght Foundation, is located in St-Paul-de-Vence. Picasso, Braque, Matisse and Léger museums also feature and there is plenty of beautiful foothill countryside to explore.

Resorts further along the coast from Cannes include St-Tropez, a terribly crowded, hard to reach yet fashionable village (popular with the international jet set and their outrageously expensive yachts) and Port Grimaud. The ‘Port’, as many residents call it, sums up many of the worst parts of the Riviera with ostentatious wealth not making up for a lack of any local input, a dearth of nightlife beyond ‘British’ pubs and a largely ex-patriate population. Nearby are St-Raphael, at one time a Roman resort, and now a comfortable middle-class vacation town, and its twin resort of Frejus. Grasse, just north of Cannes, is a charming hilltop town famed for its perfume.

Corsica

The island of Corsica is made up of two French départements: Haute Corse (upper Corsica) and Corse du Sud (south Corsica). The 8720 sq km (3367 sq miles) are inhabited by not many more than 250,000 people. It is one of the very few places left in Europe that is not invaded by campers and trailers during the vacation season and its charm lies in this unspoiled and rugged atmosphere.

The name Corsica, or Corse, is a modernization of Korsai, believed to be a Phoenician word meaning ‘covered with forests’. The Phoenician Greeks landed here 560 years before the Christian era to disturb inhabitants who had probably originated in Liguria. From that time on, Corsica has been fought for, or over, creating a bloody history probably unparalleled for such a small area. The Greeks were followed by the Romans, then the Vandals, Byzantines, Moors and Lombards. In 1768, Genoa sold Corsica to France and its 2500 years of disputed ownership ended. In spite of its extensive and colorful history, it is of course best known as the birthplace of Napoléon Bonaparte.

The island has been described as ‘a mountain in the sea’, for when approached by sea that is exactly what it looks like. A strange land, the mountains rise abruptly from the western shore where the coast is indescribably beautiful with a series of capes and isolated beachless bays; along its entire length rock and water meet with savage impact. The coastline, unfolded, is about 992km (620 miles) long. Corsica consists of heaths, forests, granite, snow, sand beaches and orange trees. This combination has produced a strange, fiery, lucidly intellectual and music-loving race of people, both superstitious and pious at the same time.

The interior is quite undeveloped, with mountains, and dry scrubby land overgrown with brush called maquis (from the local maccia which means ‘brush’). It is a dry wilderness of hardy shrubs – arbutus, mastic, thorn, myrtle, juniper, rosemary, rock rose, agave, pistachio, fennel, heather, wild mint and ashphodel, ‘the flower of hell’. During the Geman occupation of France (1940-44), resistance fighters were given the name maquis from the association of the wild country in which they hid, much as the savage backlands of Corsica provided at one time comparatively safe shelter for the island bandits. There is a desolate grandeur about the maquis, while, on the other hand, the rugged beauty of Corsica’s magnificent mountain scenery is anything but desolate. A considerable amount of forested area remains although, since discovered by the Greeks, it has been frequently raided for its fine, straight and tall laricio pine that seems to thrive only here. They have been known to grow as high as 60m (200ft), perfect for use as masts and are still used as such. Corsica is also rich in cork oaks, chestnuts and olives. There is a Regional Nature Conservation Park on the island. North of the eastern plain are the lowlands, principally olive groves, known as La Balagne, the hinterland of Calvi and l’Ile Rousse. To the south is the dazzling white city of Ajaccio, full of Napoleonic memorabilia. The town runs in a semicircle on the calm bay, set against a backdrop of wooded hills.

At the foot of the cape at the northern end of the island is the commercial, but none the less picturesque, town of Bastia, with its historic citadel towering over the headland. The old town has preserved its streets in the form of steps connected by vaulted passages, converging on the Vieux Port. The port itself, with a polyglot population, is busy all year round.

A little further north, the terraced St Nicholas Beach, shaded by palm trees and covered with parasols and cafe tables, separates the old port from the new. The new port, just beyond, is the real commercial port of the island.

Corsican cuisine is essentially simple, with the sea providing the most dependable source of food, including its famous lobster. Freshwater fish abound in the interior and, as is to be expected, the maquis is game country. The aromatic herbs and berries add a particularly piquant flavor to the meat. Among the game available, sanglier and marcassin – young and older wild boar – turn up in season either roasted, stewed in a daube of red wine, or with a highly spiced local pibronata sauce. Sheep and goats are plentiful. Pigs, fed on chestnuts, are common at the Corsican table and they make an unusually flavored ham. The extremes of the Corsican climate limit the variety of vegetables available. The Corsicans like hot and strong flavors that use even more herbs than are used in Provence. They like to shock with hot peppers and strong spices. A fish soup called dziminu, like bouillabaise but much hotter, is made with peppers and pimentos. Inland freshwater fish is usually grilled and the local eels, called capone, are cut up and grilled on a spit over a charcoal fire. A peppered and smoked ham, called prizzutu, resembles the Italian prosciutto, but with an added chestnut flavor.

A favorite between-meal snack is figatelli, a sausage made of dried and spiced pork with liver. Placed between slices of a special bread, these are grilled over a wood fire. Red wine is available in abundance, but white and rosé are also produced on the island.