Yep, we are island hopping in Europe. First stop – Corsica. It is technically part of France but it really isn’t that near to France. We took an overnight ferry from Toulon (near Marseilles), from 6:30pm to 7:00am the next morning. We are not “cruisers” so this was kinda new for us. We rented a room with a “porthole” that we didn’t see anything out of because the “cruise” was during the night. We actually had to be out of our room by 6am so it was still dark. It cost us 99 euros which included our transportation and our room.
We ended up in the Corsican town of Bastia at 7am where we would spend the next 4 nights. It is not ideal to arrive at your destination at 7am, especially if you are staying at an Airbnb. We had a slow coffee at a cafe, and then wandered around the town a bit with our rolly bags until our Airbnb host texted us and said we could store our bags until cleaning was done. Our place was right next to the cathedral in the center of old town. The church bells were fun to hear, and they thoughtfully were quiet between 10pm and 7am. I would highly recommend this Airbnb primarily because of location. We were a block from the marina and just a block from a small square that is used as a market on the weekends. Restaurants with patios filling the streets were everywhere.
Bastia is a beautiful town with the fairy book Mediterranean marina surrounded by cafes with patios. The old fort and other old buildings are cliffside surrounding the marina. We did a lot of walking through the city as well as along the paths along the sea where we could see the crystal clear waters. We weren’t near any swimming beaches and it was a bit windy so we didn’t actually see how warm the water was. We checked out the history museum and were hoping to attend the Beer festival which was scheduled for the weekend. Unfortunately the wind cancelled the festival, because the breweries tents wanted to fly away. We were still eating French food so we spent a lot of times in the cafes.
I did get up early one day and took way too many pictures of the sun coming up in Bastia.
After 4 nights it was time to see more of the island of Corsica. Corsica doesn’t have many trains so we ended up taking a bus to our next destination, Bonifacio. There wasn’t even a bus that went all the way there, so we ended up taking a 3 hour bus and having a lunch layover in Porto Vecchio before getting our final 1 hour bus to Bonifacio. We thought Bastia was beautiful, but Bonifacio was really a photographers dream. We stayed 3 nights inside the old city walls on top of the hill. Which meant we had to drag our bags all the way from the marina to the center of the old town a few hundred feet up. That just meant we were again in the middle of all the action and the great views. The town was on a small peninsula hill between the ocean and a bay with a marina.
We had not realized how much of a bougie town this would be. The marina was filled with huge boats and people that can afford the huge boats. The waterfront restaurants had some high prices but were still doing a lot of business. Our Airbnb wasn’t cheap because there really weren’t that many rooms in town and they are able to charge a premium to stay near the marina or inside the old city walls. It really isn’t our normal vibe, but we can live it up a bit for 3 days. We were able to find some reasonable places to eat that still served some good French food, and we even did a bit of cooking to keep costs down.
We wandered around the marina and the clifftop walled city a bit but the real draw for this town are the cliff views. We did a lot of walking along the cliffs and took a lot of photos. There wasn’t many museums or anything else culturally important to see so we just walked, took photos, and ate French food. We had a lot wind, so we didn’t want to go on any boat rides. That would be paying a lot of money to getting wind blasted while going up and down a lot with the waves. We were fine just battling the wind on the trails along the cliffs.
OK that’s enough pics. On our last day we woke up to a hellish rainstorm. This town was designed without rainspouts so the water just pours off the gutters to the middle of the alleys. We were taking a ferry to our next island of Sardinia so we had to endure the drenching of the alleys and then maneuver our rolly bags back down the steep streets to the marina. We made it just fine but we were drowned rats. The ferry ride was spent inside the cabin trying to dry out.
Next stop – Italy and the town on Oblia on the island of Sardinia. Spoiler alert – it is not as beautiful as Bastia or Bonifacio.