Corsica Day 2

Today, we got up in the morning and headed for the beach. We stopped first for breakfast at a patisserie in Porto Vecchio (and to pick up a few things, like my crutches, at the local pharmacy). We then headed out to Santa Giulia to relax on the sand and in the water for a while. The beach is a really nice swimming beach that was particularly great for kids because it is super shallow for a very long way out. (This was especially good given that we were down one supervisory adult.) The kids and Tim and Amy swam a bit, played in the rocks, then decided to play in the sand for a while. Tim wandered and took some photos. After the group tired of the sand, we headed back to the apartment for a simple lunch. The plan was to put the kids in the car, convince the little girls to go to sleep, and take a drive in the mountains, and finish with dinner in one of the mountain towns.

This is what we did. Minus the naps. Plus some rain that made driving harrowing. Minus dinner at a restaurant in the mountains. We drove up from Porto Vecchio through L’Ospedale forest and towards a loop through several elevated towns. The drive through the forest (culminating in a very picturesque lake) was fantastic. The little girls slept for a bit, but the frequent stopping for photo opportunities cut the actual nap time pretty short. Everyone played around the banks of a pretty lake, then we continued the drive. The drive was pretty, but the roads were narrow and crowded in the towns. We discovered that the restaurants don’t open until 8 (not what we had bargained for), and that driving on these roads in torrential downpours is less than fun. We did see free ranging cows and pigs (literally wandering across and along the roads). We continued to drive back towards Porto Vecchio, finding a really simple pizza-and-beer place to stop for dinner (around 9pm finally!) before heading for home.