Friday, June 19 we reached Bonifacio. The island of Corsica has a long history of being controlled by Romans, Germans, French, the Papacy, Spanish, Italians, and now it is part of France.
From where the Corinthian II docked we could see a ferry. On this trip we saw lots of large ferries. You cannot tell from my photograph, but the bow of the ship in front of the whale's head opens upward to let the vehicles drive off.
The area is very scenic. One of our tour managers told us that sometimes celebrities or wealthy people build vacation homes in the area. The homes blow up. (I guess the locals don't like having too many foreigners around.)
We rode Le Petit Train (no tracks, just an engine pulling cars, that looks like a train) to the top of the limestone cliffs with its citadel founded in the year 828. We had a guided walking tour through the narrow, hilly, cobblestone streets. We saw the location of the underground grain storage silos. We saw the troughs that carried rooftop collected rainwater to cisterns under the front of a church. The hilltop fortress was the scene of a very early instance of biological warfare. One time when the citadel was under siege, the attackers threw clothing from people who had died of the Black Death over the fortified wall. About 5000 of the 5700 residents died.
We had some free time. I bought some postcards and walked to the citadel's drawbridge. The drawbridge went over an open area next to a fortress wall. From the inside I tried to figure out how the drawbridge could be raised. I cannot really tell. But it does appear that as part of the raising process small stone wheels rode down grooves on either side. There wasn't much light and my picture is underexposed and I've improved it slightly using iPhoto.
We had lunch aboard our ship.
In the afternoon we had a boat cruise of the harbor. Here is a picture of the side of the harbor opposite the citadel. You can see that the sea is slowly eroding the 200 foot high limestone cliffs.
Here is a tour manager's picture of a sea carved grotto that the boat entered. Inside there is an opening to the sky.
Every time we left our ship we took a small yellow landing card. There was a crew member present who made sure we did. When we returned to the ship we returned the card to its location (organized by cabin number) on this rack. This way the crew could tell when everyone was on board. One person nearly missed the boat in Nice. It was our scheduled departure time. The gangplank was partially disassembled. I could hear a family member on the ship talking to her by cell phone. "Where are you?" "She's on such and such street, running." She made it carrying something in a plastic bag. Shopping?
After we left Bonifacio and were on our way to Cagliari I went to the ship's bridge. We were passing between the islands of Corsica and Sardinia. It is a little dangerous and there is local concern about tankers passing through. The radar is not your grandfather's radar. Yes, the ship's position is in the center. Local terrain is shown. But, also the planned course is displayed as a straight line. Planned course changes are displayed as additional straight lines. Also, quite a lot of navigation data are displayed on the screen. I asked if they had GPS. The crewman said: Yes, we have it for backup. He then pointed to a slightly smaller nearby screen.
Sid Horenstein of the American Museum of Natural History gave a lecture with the title From Stones to Rocks. He talked about the 450 million year old granite (igneous rock from magma that was part of the Earth's crust that has been subducted, heated by friction, and slowly cooled) and the 40 million year old limestone (sedimentary rock from shallow warm water deposits) that make up the island of Corsica. Sid told us there are different sizes of rocks: pebbles, cobbles, and boulders. Sid told us that rocks are found in nature, stones are used. So, you might be walking in the woods and pick up a rock to throw to frighten a snake. When it lands it is a stone. Of course, the next person to see it might not know if it is a rock or a stone.
Then dinner and we were on our way to Cagliari.
