The Northern Peninsula
In this second Coriscan itinerary, we focus on the northern tip of the island. There are 7 towns, and the map below provides the most efficient order of visiting. If you choose to do the full excursion, it’s a round-trip drive of about 277 miles, again using Ajaccio as your home port.
If you prefer to simplify, you can cut it down to about 220 miles by eliminating Ghisoni, Aleria, Erbalunga, and Centuri. That would still give you a good enough feel for the upper peninsula and you’ll be able to spend more time at the important destinations (Bastia, Saint Florent, and Nonza). And on your way back to Ajaccio, you’ll drive through the Desert des Agriates, a wilderness area that’s not quite like the deserts as we know them in the U.S., but still it’s an official desert, and the only one in Europe.
As we mentioned in Part 1, there are no verbal descriptions of each town, but we give you pictures and links to other websites if you want more information. And we recommend that you load up each of the destinations in your GPS and find restaurants for each town (trip advisor and yelp are great resources) before you arrive in Corsica, and print out this itinerary so you have a hard copy. Again, while you might not fall in love with every destination, (and some of these towns are so small that we suggest you don’t blink as you get close) you will probably find 1 or 2 that you really enjoy.