Day 11: Bonifacio: What The Hell Was That?

Last night after dinner, and I think we all agree it was a relatively uneventful day, things suddenly picked up quite dramatically. 😬

I’ll pick up the story from our dinner out at a local place called Route 66. Not exactly the sort of place one would expect to find in a medievalish hill town. You’ll perhaps recall these dramatic images of the town as we drove up for dinner.

*Yup, the skies were definitely looking pretty dramatic.*

For comparison purposes I took this photo today from almost the same place.

*Dinner was great and just the food shift we both needed. Even had ketchup!*

We went to the grocery store and purchased some fruit and drove back down to our hotel in the dark.

Very shortly after returning we started to hear noise beyond the cars passing our window. I walked over to the window.

The lightning flashes were coming faster or quicker and faster.

We couldn’t believe how fast it was coming in! The ferocity of the storm continued to build!

I said to Annemarie that had we walked up to dinner in town as planned that we would have been caught outside in this storm coming back in the dark.

It was like this for about 3 hours then slowly moved on.

This morning we weren’t in much of a hurry. We drove into Sarténe and found a nice place for breakfast. Tea and coffee from the bar and I walked up to a bakery for two almond croissants.

Our walk around town included a brief visit to the central church. While we had breakfast I noticed that the sun was shining on the outside of the Stainglass windows. I was hoping to find some transported light, and I wasn’t disappointed.

This is the actual Stainglass window that made this light effect on the wall

A bit more walking and a few more photos and we were on our way.

*For Caitlin who loves old doors as much as I do!*

We left town, and almost immediately we got caught behind a big bus that was clearly transporting cyclists and their gear. Actually, we think the cyclists were on the road riding somewhere. The bus also pulling a large trailer slowly wound its way through the many sharp curves on the highway as we slowly climbed to the top of the pass. A long line of traffic backed up behind us as we climbed. The bus driver was clearly not prepared to pull over. Such is life. I was eventually able to pass the bus, and we made good time crossing the south part of the island to the east coast. We had decided to explore some of the beaches that are supposed to be so beautiful. We were not disappointed

We parked on the side of the road and after gathering up our beach gear we walked a couple of kilometres down to the water. It was spectacular!

We spent the afternoon floating in the Mediterranean and drying off in the hot sun. It went up past 30° this afternoon making our dips that much more special. We had a little bit of food with us that pretty much covered our lunch needs.

After climbing back up to the car in the heat of the afternoon, we headed south for Bonifacio. We stopped at our rather basic hotel to drop off our gear after filling up the fuel tank (CDN$3/litre) and returned the car to Europe Car. They appeared happy with the condition of the car and processed the return quickly. We were told that everything was in great shape, but to be on the safe side I photographed the car from all angles. It was a great little car!

We spent the rest of the day wandering the streets of Bonifácio, but I’ll cover that in my post tomorrow (hint: it’s quite an amazing place!). We have a full day here to explore before taking the ferry southward to Sardinia on Saturday. There’s lots to do here, but the weather looks a little iffy tomorrow, so we’ll see what happens.