Restonica & the Citadel

Corte is a bright beacon in a rare valley with houses painted too bright – again, like the laughter of the visitors and residents of each mountain village.





The ornate buildings with cerulean shutters are a challenge – but the other inhabitants of the land – the boar, the birds, the spotted lizards – know it is only a matter of time before reclamation.





We drive to the place where we’ve placed all our hopes for the night – Les Jardins de Glacier – and it’s so much more than three lines in a guidebook could possibly describe. At the end of a too-narrow road – the Restonica – where hikers convene at makeshift campsites, it is a testament to water cults of previous times, perched on a river that was inexplicably plucked out of a dream I had two years ago. From the water, sheer like transparent silk, rippling over white boulders and pooling into impossibly light green holes, it rises up, rosy red with turquoise shutters – the very hotel from my dream – All that’s missing, I say to James – is the Egyptian Sphinx at the fork further along the river. He nods to the fat German man floating in the pool, “What about him?” and we laugh and make bad German jokes. I cannot imagine not being allowed to stay here, like I couldn’t stay at the red hotel in my dream, and we wait 15 excruciating minutes for the verdict.

(Merci Mikey J. & Pens)

I can’t help but dance around when the sweet little Frenchwoman comes to the door of the garden and tells us we may stay – for a pittance! I’d happily pay thousands to rest my head here, to bath in the stream plucked directly from my dream, to eat and be utterly stuffed with Corsican wild boar and thank the cathedrals of this astounding display of nature for letting us relax.


(Merci Lydia)

On our last day, we venture to the citadel at the heart and height of Corte. It is more or less preserved in its 15th century state. I hobble up the cobble stone streets, because Le Petite Train is nowhere in sight.

Corte has always been the core of the Corsican independence movement. French is obliterated from all the signs. Che Guevara's image has been embraced and bannered across the town in graffiti, on t-shirts, in bars.

"This is where all our bandits have taken refuge?"

-- The Corsican Bandit Guy de Maupassant