yes, yet another vacation. what am i going to do once back in the states, with like 2 days of paid holiday? groan and regret whining so much about france, no doubt. but we'll deal with that later, non?for the first and only time, our entire little clan of the coolest assistants d'anglais (andrea, hannah, kate, mandy, sophie, et moi) succeeded in coordinating a trip together, striking out to explore corsica. prior to this trip i never really thought too much about going there, but now that i've been and have seen a smidge of the island, i definitely have to return. Feb is the off-season, so we scored awesome ferry tickets: Toulon to Bastia overnight (21h - 7h) in cabins for just 68E RT and a 3-star hotel in the vieux port for just 20E/nuit. sweeeetness. the only ferry i'd ever been on was the one from jersey to NYC, so when i saw our huge boat with 9 floors, restaurants, games rooms, escalators and elevators, well it was pretty much like being on the titanic. or something...our trip started off well, finding some native toulonais (?) to help us find the ferry (they're just so much nicer in the south!). of course we arrived justbefore the boat was due to leave port. aka we were our usual spectacle, this time 6 girls trying to run through the port and parking lots with huge hiking backpacks and duffles, over-stuffed on pizza and salad, kind of like a gaggle of laughing penguins or something. on the upside, the ferry people were super sympa and drove us out to the boat, showed us to our cabins, the whole nine.
luckily none of the motion-sickness prone girlies got sick that night, and i have to admit that the accommodations were much less sketchy than i was anticipating (i think after staying in so many hostels and traveling on a budget like a pro, i might just be easily impressed, though) and i slept pretty well. waking up was still hard, at 6h30, with announcements that the restaurant was open for breakfast being piped into the room...we straggled into the sleepy metropolis that is bastia and made our way slowly to the Hotel Posta Vecchia, stopping frequently to enjoy the sunrise and pink shadows on the shop facades. Dropped our bags in the luggage room at the hotel, took cafe and baguettes in the vieux port to fortify ourselves for a long morning stroll (we couldnt check in - and nap! - until noon).
We spent the morning exploring the ramparts of the citadel and climbing Bastia's hilly, picturesque streets. the sunlight on the Med is unlike anything ive ever seen before; the sky seems so close and so pure and the sun just makes you feel happy all over. although the weather was still too cool to swim, we sat along the sea walls and took in plenty of sunshine. the weather was perfect on Tuesday, our first day in Corsica, although the following 2 days were rather more cloudy and slightly chillier. Up in the citadel we discovered gardens with lemon trees, and while reestablishing our zen mentality on the ramparts, we planned out our future lives as fisher-women...and saw dolphins! for real, a dolphin couple, just out there chilling with the birds and fisherman. very cool. we then spent the better part of and hour trying to walk out to the lighthouses that guard the new port and offer a great view of the vieux port and the hills to the northwest of the city.
view from the top of a cliff en route to St Florent
instant regulars) and walking up hills, so we decided to rent a car for the second day and explore some neighboring towns. the original idea was to drive from St Florent all the way up the Cap Corse, stopping at beaches and vineyards as we went, but after considering how treacherous the roads in the hills are (uber uber tortuous twisty-turny) and the fact that we didnt want to go over the 250 km gratuit that came in the car deal, we decided instead to drive across the north to l'Ile Rousse, another beachy-port town. Mandy and i rented the car - well, she was the driver (i really do need to learn officially how to drive a shift) and i swiped for it...it was definitely a 5-passenger car that we squeezed all 6 of us into. not terribly comfy, but it was certainly a bonding experience or something. im proud to say that we worked well together to prevent any physical manifestations of motion sickness - not an easy feat considering the driving conditions - and also avoided being pulled over for not having seat belts or any of that jazz. the perk of driving and not taking a bus was that we could stop whenever we felt overcome by the beauty of corsica, meaning pretty much the whole time we were ohh-ing and ahh-ing. there are snow-capped mountains for skiiing in central-northern part of the island, turquoise seas with sandy beaches, weird semi-cacti-like vegetation and scrubby bushes, cows, boats, it's beautiful.
at Ile rousse we frolicked in the sea until we were numb up to our knees, then set out to the tour genoise, out on a little spit off the mainland, aww-ing at the fat boat cats lazing around the boats. walking out to the tour and the lighthouse, clambering around on the red rocks, marveling at the stoic majesty of the cliffs, i had a fit of nostalgie, remembered the fun times i had in St Malo with the Paris semester kids, and i also decided that i most certainly need to return to this place sometime, maybe chill out for a year or so. there is just so much to explore, 3 days was no where near enough time. i was grateful that we went over this holiday rather than in april, though,because the towns are just so tranquil without hoards of tourists...but i want to see flowers and green and go snorkeling sometime, too...
1 commentaire:
i've never seen such pretty rocks! they look so clean!
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