moving on to Corsica

 Because I have martyr tendencies and I like a challenge, I decided to get to the airport for my flight to Corsica on the public transport (options were to take uber or the taxi.

Flight was at 9, needed to be there two hours before that, needed to take line 1 to Jean Medecin, and then cross over to take line 2 to Terminal 2... 


I did a walk through the night before to make sure I knew where the elevator was down to line 2 and decided I could do it. This meant waking at 4:30 to get showered etc to get to the tram station (Opera) by 6 - the mystery bit to this game is that at that time of the morning, it wasn't clear whether the trams would be every 10 minutes or every 30 minutes. 

It was still dark when I left my hotel, I momentarily wondered if I was crazy (was it safe wandering around in the dark?) plunged on, just missed a tram, decided to walk to line 2, passed lots of drunk young teens, down the escalator and voila! made it with time to spare.

There were only about 20 people on the flight to Bastia, no sooner up in the air than down again. There must have been a delay in landing calls because we circled the airport a few times, but the view of the island was magnificent. Corsica isn't called the jewel of  France for nothing.










It's  always another challenge to find your accommodation, but here I am on the 3rd floor (no lift) looking straight onto the marina in the old port in Bastia. How perfect could it be? More about Bastia tomorrow...

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The End

Image
 This is it folks, the end of the blogging, this is the last one, and it will be brief - because, well the excursion was brief. Following Rocco's advice, I set off this morning at 8 to go to Ostuni - I jumped online to see the best way to do so. You see, to date, I have relied on trains, and there is no train to Ostuni. 'Rome to Rio' (great travel site) said Bus/ Taxi/ Drive. Unfortunately, the information for the buses was scant - and the more I checked it out, the more I could see that there were three bus companies and no particular 'station' as such. I spotted people with suitcases down the hill from the old town here, spoke to them, a bus pulled up, was going to Fasano and the driver indicated that I should get on. He said I could then take the bus to Ostuni. Arrive in Fasano, sprawling large city- someone pointed me in the direction of a link bus to the train station because it seems that there is a train to Ostuni from Fasano (but no train from Locorotondo t
Read more

Rental Car. Part 1. First Destination.

Image
 Early start to the day. And it was raining.  I had arranged to be at Eurocar rental cars to pick up my Mercedes. Yes, that's right people, a Mercedes, I've (sort of) arrived. Was momentarily disappointed when it was silver, but that was quickly overshadowed by the fact that I had no idea how to drive it. Seems that other cars are more sophisticated than mine - even the car rental guy couldn't work out the gears or the GPS - which were really the only components of the car that were of importance to me as I had no idea (in the world) where I needed to go, except that I wanted to see Rocamadour (First Destination). I drove Really Carefully, sticking to the right hand side of the road, not daring to go the speed limit, and arrived early enough in the day to find a carpark, but not early enough to miss the sweltering heat. The temp gauge in the car said 32. Seriously dripping with perspiration, and that was just was climbing down to the village. Rocamadour is a small
Read more

Back in monopoli

Image
 We stayed here last year and I really enjoyed it, smallish old town, good food, bars, meandering little streets and walkways, surprising things behind big doors. I still like it, totally worth a visit. The weather was cooler again this morning, cool enough to send me back into my room to grab a long sleeved shirt, and even then I felt I needed to shelter from the wind.  Basilica Concattedrale di Maria Santissima della Madia is the name of this beautiful church but there are 18 others to choose from, including one which has depictions of death on the door, mummified administrators in the crypt and is a place to go and pray for those in limbo - it's a purgatory church. Today there were three weddings at the Basilica and honestly, we need to up our game in terms of wedding clothes. The prize went to the couple who both were a deep purple - his suit and her dress. Men were mostly in sneakers with their Italian suits, and it was all sparkle and gold for shoes for the women. It was a fe
Read more