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French Confection
Corsica is an eruption of granite and magma 105 miles (169 kilometers) south of France but only 56 miles (90 kilometers) west of Italy. Its craggy mountains soar to almost 9,000 feet (2,700 meters) on one coast, while undulating beaches and vineyards line the other. Corsica's interior is a jagged spine ribbed in both directions by a herringbone of valleys so steep and lush that for centuries their inhabitants lived studiously apart…. In the chestnut forests of the Castagniccia region, tiny villages and grand buildings cling to mountainsides, eternally poised to repulse the waves of invaders that swept over Corsica for 2,000 years: Greeks, Carthaginians, Romans, Moors, Genoese, and, finally, the French. Beaches, deserts, and alpine forests are layered like the fromage de brebis pastry that Corsicans serve to visitors. This diversity in a 115-mile-long (185-kilometer-long) outcropping of soil and rock once led an American diplomat, who had a house there, to say, "Corsica is not an island—it's a continent."
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