Sardegna...after the wedding

Some days are so easy and everything falls into place like a perfectly stacked serpentine line of dominoes. After a busy morning getting ready to leave – taking Megsy to the airport and welling up at her departure – we find a car and drive up to the north.

(Grazie Breda)

Gas stations on the side of the road in Italy shouldn’t have freshly made prosciutto sandwiches…but they do, of course. The men gather by the counter and lick at their prepackaged ice cream cones, staring at the foreigners. The three Sardinian girls working the counter giggle and smile at us.

We wind our way up up up the road to Tempio P., ears popping, the sky hazy, the smells of eucalyptus and olive floating into the car in gusts which toss the Panda about. A stop at a gas station to get en route and I am listening to the dark Italian’s directions and, for once, understanding everything.

The dirt road into the agriturismo cuts through a vineyard, horned bulls in the back lowing and a thunderstorm approaching with streaks of lightning cutting the sky. The mist obscures the mountains behind us.

We roll back from dinner full of the Agristurismo Campesi wine we had drunk before…the fresh ricotta and grilled zucchini…the pork risotto…the fine textured, buttery polenta…the Sardinian citrus cake…espresso, limoncella and now more wine…their Karka…and it is all wet on our porch, engulfed by dark vista, punctuated by flashes of blue lightning in the distant scrubby mountains. Cars sounding like fighter jets race along the road, past the vineyard, over the edge of nowhere and rocky crags.

(Grazie, Laura & Christos)

The Steps of Bonifacio

From Santa Teresa Gallura to Bonifacio, we're on a ferry with the large blue whale – Moby – A bit too jovial (and blue) for its namesake. The gas fumes and rocking make me sick but it’s cold and raining outside.

We play a connect the dots game and suddenly Bonifacio is upon us or we are upon it.

This city is a fortress clinging to sparkling white cliffs…where, in the past, a sentinel would have marked our arrival, now, in this 21^st century, bands of tourists look down at our approach.

We start the sweaty ascent into the heart of the city, unsure of our movements as only newcomers can be – soon we will know each windy, narrow street like the backs of our hands, but now we come to our hotel Santa Teresa by the back way, straddling a fence, me, white-knuckled, sure we will plummet off the cliff to our deaths.

(Merci Rich, Dawn, Chris & Alex)

The sky breaks open and unleashes a torrent of rain. Guy de Maupassant writes of Corsica’s torrents and wildness in a way that suggests he, too, has looked out of a room in despair at the falling rain blown in sheets against the cliffs of Bonifacio.



When the rain subsides a little, we make our way out onto the cobbled streets of Bonifacio, where we find a true local restaurant...Casa Doria. It is proper Corsican home cooking with tomato sauce and potatoes that stick to the ribs...and the first of what will be several chevre-on-toasts salads. This one is the best, within the cozy walls decorated by old Corsican farm tools.


(Merci Katherine, Kevin, Imogen & Scarlett)

Bonifacio awakes...

Morning creeps in and we are starting to feel normal again after days of too much stress and strain. The sky hangs heavy but is quickly being burned off by hot Corsican sun. We make our way into town to find crepes and cafe lattes.



There is no one here. The streets echo with our footfall and, as we sit eating our crepes and café lattes out of small plastic cups, our street comes alive, one eye at a time. The shopkeepers open their doors and sweep out the last evening’s debris.

The local dogs hover alternately and roll on their backs, uncaring that the streets are so narrow, cars barely avoid hitting them. The morning ferry arrives and the tourists flood in, linen trousers and dresses flapping in the morning wind, credit cards waiting to rack up their purchases. We watch silently from our post.

We wander down the old steep steps to the marina in search of scooters, internet, food. Past the yachts of the very rich, we settle at an outdoor spot next to the moored boats and consume a feast of mussels, beef carpaccio, pork & honey, veal & green olives, ice cream, and apple tart.


(Grazie David, Diana, Bart & Debbie)

We wander around and I am intent on linen trousers. The woman in the shop insists that they should fit tightly on my calves and suggests that, as they don’t fit, I need to “try harder.” This news is highly amusing to James.

After lazy naps and frantic phone calls canceling our Sardinian hotels (for we are in love with Corsica and must stay), we wander back out to the restaurant La Scala with the waiter with crooked teeth who, confused at us ordering only one course to share, happily pushes anything else on us he can and saddles us with a bitter, yet very expensive digestive…but posed for a picture.

Writing our Merci on a gold platter with legs propped up and drunkenness setting in fast, we sit, we relax, we smile. Corsica awaits.


(Merci Matt, Marie & Hermione)

In a cemetery overlooking the sea...

Out of the window at the hotel Santa Teresa, there is a paved football pitch and a cemetery, which, when the sun is blasting down on the cliffs, glows beyond white.



Narrow paths slink through row after row of the resting dead, monumentalized with the stones and fabric of their country.





These sturdy structures resist wind whipping around them, tumultuous rain, lightning...my hair doesn't fair quite so well.



The cerulean blue of the virgin is everywhere in Corsica -- shutters, doors...it never occurred to me before today that it is the blue of the sky and the sea made Catholic by this iconography.

To the Is. Lavezzi...

Nervously looking out the window at clouds, willing the patches of blue sky to widen, to colonize the clouds, burn them off, because today we’ve decided to go out on a boat (we’re on a boat!) to the neighboring Is. Lavezzi and around the coast. A mad scramble and an attack on some quiches and aubergine pizza and we’ve got our groceries for a nice picnic lunch and are running to the mooring point, blue sky emerging more and more by the minute.



Standing on top of the boat, balancing and shifting our weight like trapeze artists, the smooth and weathered stones of the scrubby island rise like ancient fingers from the turquoise bays. We moor up and climb onto the land. The spotted lizards scatter at our arrival and we weave along the serpentine paths, first onto a bay full of yachts and sailboats moored, by a pointy almost oriental monument to the ship Semillante, which, in the mid 17^th century, shipwrecked, its gunpowder exploding the ship and dragging its 600 men into the sea where now we don snorkel masks, veer away from pinky purple jellyfish, ominously and lazily floating and, by turns, propelling themselves, and dive down for shells like I’ve never seen outside of a beach town tourist shop.





We climb out onto a tiny cluster of looming white rocks and grassy patches and the seagulls bark at us, diving at our heads, warning us that we’ve ventured where we don’t belong.



Swimming back to our beach camp, James isn’t so lucky in avoiding the jellyfish. We scramble out onto the sand, I grab my snorkel mask, dip behind a rock, pee and pour it onto his stinging arm, in a barely controlled panic. Two doses on urine later and the sting is going down. We hightail it back to the boat, thinking another beach awaits, but realize too late that we’ve misunderstood and we’re on our way back to Bonifacio.


(spot the houses?)

But first we tour an island where luxury villas peek out from private rock faces, where mooring is not allowed, Organic extensions of the stone, some almost like Gaudi structures. Back to the coastline and we veer into a tight grotto cave with a natural window onto the ground far above. The water is deep, unnaturally turquoise and begs for a bandito's treasure, a la Monte Cristo, to be tucked away under the lapping water line.

(Merci Carlos)

After an impromptu picnic lunch on a dock in the harbor watching sailboats come and go, the woman perched by a harness on her mast, we head back for a lazy bit of shut eye.









We emerge onto the streets of Bonifacio just as the sun has reached its peak of golden twilight. We drink Corsican beer and watch young men play balls on a pitch over looking the sheer white cliffs.





We wander, half drunk, down to U Castille for a special dinner, one of the few gifts that remains unchanged from our registry. Pork charcuterie, chevre salad, Corsican aperitifs, going light on the bread for once, our charming waiter with the Italian mother – so he supports Italy in the World Cup – and a French father – so he loves Corsica, we have spiny lobster and the most beautiful mushroom beef filet, Corsican wine, and we are in need of extra stomachs. We stumble home, the air fragrant with myrtle and pine, the redder than red poppies bordering our steps and we collapse into bed and look ahead to uncharted Corsican roads.


(Merci Goekjians)