On Board Le Bellot, Wild and Authentic Corsica, 12-19 September

jpalbny · October 7, 2021

22 minutes ago, Cie said:

Thank you so much for your post on your trip. We are doing the same cruise next week. I am glad I read this I did not know there was so much hiking, so I am pulling out my hiking boots 🙂

I hope you enjoy it as much as we did!

And, I hope you get to visit Calvi. If you have a chance, please let me know what we missed. The one wine that I've tried (out of the 3 we brought home from that region) was nice.

We didn't bother with "real" hiking boots. Chris wore a pair of sneakers. I wore my Skechers which had a somewhat tougher sole. But hikers would be ok to bring.

Bon voyage!

erikb923 · October 11, 2021

Wonderful trip, thinking about trying Ponant (enjoy french cuisine and wine!). I recently returned from France and had the same Covid Pass Sanaitire issue as well, applied 2 weeks before trip and nothing, had to use my US vaccine card for the paris-bordeaux train ride (wasn't sure that would work). Did apply again with the new website and got the QR codes emailed that night (assumed they stopped work at like 7pm), was crazy!

highplanesdrifters · October 23, 2021

Thank you @jpalbny for this wonderful report. We are thinking of trying Ponant in the future. We are regulars on Silversea and Seabourns smaller ships. Time to branch out. We will probably look for cruises that accomidate more english speakers as our high school french will only get us so far. I see that there are a number of tour groups that are partnering with Ponant to cater to English speakers. Will focus on those. Any other tips?

We also enjoyed your South American/Easter Island report. Headed back to South America on SS Wind next year and may have to slip in Easter Island.

Thanks again!

jpalbny · October 23, 2021

48 minutes ago, highplanesdrifters said:

We are regulars on Silversea and Seabourns smaller ships. Time to branch out. We will probably look for cruises that accomidate more english speakers as our high school french will only get us so far. I see that there are a number of tour groups that are partnering with Ponant to cater to English speakers. Will focus on those. Any other tips?

I honestly didn't mind being one of the few Anglophones on board. True, my French is borderline better than High School level and I am confident enough to try speaking it, and I was able to get further with it than I have in the past. But Chris doesn't speak French at all, and it didn't matter. We still found a few fun couples to hang out with and could communicate between my French and their English.

And on this cruise, where there were only about 3-5 of us at any given time in the Anglophone group, it was like we were on a semi-private tour a lot of the time. The crew went out of their way to make sure that we had someone around to speak English to, and to translate for us when needed. In about half of the cases it was just 3-7 Anglophones in our own separate group; the Francophone groups were bigger. In some ways it was better than being on a 50-50 cruise where the Anglophone groups would be much bigger.

The only tip would be to go into the trip expecting that the ship will feel like you're vacationing in France. The food and wine is definitely French (and it was very good), but it's not geared to American palates - we were hoping for that and were not disappointed. Expect that and enjoy it. Hope you try it and have fun!

highplanesdrifters · October 24, 2021

@jpalbny Good to know! I like going out of my comfort zone, even in minor ways. And, what's not to love about France! Time to put Ponant in the rotation. Thanks again for taking the time to reply and hope to see you onboaed someday.

Cie · October 27, 2021

On 10/7/2021 at 10:28 AM, jpalbny said:

I hope you enjoy it as much as we did!

And, I hope you get to visit Calvi. If you have a chance, please let me know what we missed. The one wine that I've tried (out of the 3 we brought home from that region) was nice.

We didn't bother with "real" hiking boots. Chris wore a pair of sneakers. I wore my Skechers which had a somewhat tougher sole. But hikers would be ok to bring.

Bon voyage!

We were lucky and did make it to Calvi. We also paid for the optional excursion to Village of Balagna. On our cruise we were only 4 Americans & 4 Germans that spoke English. For Calvi they got us a small tour bus so it was better than being on the full size one. We rode up into the mountains through many small villages. We did a stop at an Olive vinyard. We saw the donkeys and the presses used to press out Virgin Olive oil. Very interesting. We then continued up through the mountains to the village in the sky Cateri. It is a village with only 100 residents. We strolled through all the winding streets. The views were breathtaking.

If I can add anything to Americans traveling abroad right now while we are all still battling the Covid Pandemic, it would be, we made copies of our CDC vaccination cards. I then laminated the copies putting mine and my husband's back to back. We each had a copy. That was all we needed to go into all the restaurants and shops. It was accepted without any issues not only on Corsica but also Nice. We did go to a local pharmacy in Nice (we stayed for 2 days) and got our rapid tests there in order to travel backc to the US. 50 Euro for us both no issues.