L'île de la beauté

It has been a year since our trip to Croatia. Incredible. We have been living in Luxembourg for more than a year now, the schueberfouer (main Luxembourgish city fair) came and went and we missed it again. However we did manage to find a week of holiday in the sun again. This time in the island of Corsega (Corsica in English, Corse in French).

Our route was Luxembourg to Paris (by car), a night in Paris followed by Paris to Nice to South Corsica by plane (a propeller). Our ride started a little bumpy, at 8am, we had a call from the hotel in Paris saying that they could not take our reservation and had changed us to a "sister" hotel in the same area and in an "upgraded" room. Yeah right, we agreed of course, but we are still doubting what did they mean by an upgrade ... all Parisians hotel rooms (those we can afford) are equally tiny, that includes the suites !

An hour into our journey from Lux to Paris (Chuck will argue it was 1.5 hour) Ale discovers that she does not have her passport. Uppps … the options 1) tell Chuck, get out of the car and run for your life, or 2) don’t tell Chuck, ask him to take you back to Luxembourg because you think that the iron (we don’t own an iron) is still on and burning your house. Actually, Chuck was so shocked that he turned around and without saying a word headed back to get my passport.

Finally in Corsica our holidays began. Ahhh, wonderful beach, we made it to Santa Giulia and after the usual waiting time te check in and find the right place we dropped all our stuff in our rented apartment and went straight to the beach.

The highlights of our trip?

1) A new record in beach “paletas”. Yes, we spent most of our time perfecting our new found sport and after a mediocre start of less than 10 hits we went all the way to 240 our 6th day in the beach

2) A transparent sea spotted with wonderful and inoffensive jellyfish (which I called fried eggs because of the way the look … amazingly nobody thinks the same)

3) Pizzas at the beach, ahh , almost every day. Until we realised that our bathing suits were tight(er) and decided for the Trois Deux salads next door

4) Chestnuts in everything, Corsicans even have a town called Châtaigne
(Castaña, chestnut) and we found them in almost every dish we tried

5) Brocciu cheese "the poor man's cheese." Made from the whey that remains after the production of sheep's or goat's milk cheese. And of course … charcuterie

I am not joking, check out this site for more info about the food in Corsica www.theworldwidegourmet.com/countries/france/corsica/corsica

Corsica is a beautiful island, the French call it the island of beauty “Île de la beauté” … although we spend most of our time in the beach (we have a fantastic and enviable tan to prove it) we also spent a day travelling around the island. We made it to a nice high spot in Alta Roca, found an old Genovese bridge, had a wonderful lunch of osobuco estofado and ice cream and visited Bonifacio, the southernmost part of Corsica, almost “kissing” Serdeña.

After a week in the beach we feel ready (again) to face the Luxembourgish greyness and we look forward to the coming autumn y la visita de los Brescia.