Hi all.  Janice here again with another installment.

Oct 5th - We drove to Siena.We wandered around a open air market for a while, had coffee and pastry and explored the town a bit before heading back.  We of course took the long way home.  Passed through some small towns and stopped at a winery.  That evening we had dinner at a restaurant about 8km past where we were staying.  It was in a small village.  The food and wine were excellent.

Oct 6th - Lori's birthday.  We had to get up at 4AM to leave by 5AM as we had a 2 hour drive to Livorno to catch the ferry to Bastia, Corsica.  We had to be there an hour ahead of time, our ferry left at 8AM.   After a few wrong turns once we got to Livorno, we found the ferry terminal with time to spare.  The ferry even left about 10-15 minutes early.  It was a smooth trip.  We arrived in Bastia about 12:45PM.  It was just a short drive to the apartment we had rented.  Our hostess is Carole, who is from Montreal. The apartment was exactly as advertised, very nice, has everything we need, even a pool.  We talked with Carole for quite awhile, she is very funny and interesting.  She told us that they had snow last winter, more than they had in the Montreal area she is from.  This is very unusual and she said the whole city shut down.  Everyone wanted to play in the snow, even the older people.  They asked her, the Canadian, why she didn't go out in the snow.  That white shit,(her words not mine) that is why I moved here, to get away from it. She gave us a bottle of Corsican wine as a house renting gift. Then we went shopping for some groceries  When we came back we unpacked and had some wine and we invited Carole to have a glass with us.  We talked again for over an hour, we even met her husband Claude and he had wine with us as well.  Very nice couple.  Carole used to be married to Pierre Cadieux, a member of parliament when Mulruney was Pirme Minister.
We cooked dinner and later had our dessert and some wine sitting by the pool.