on corsica
After a few days in Corsica, I noticed something different. Unlike most trips, which seem to unfold according to reservations made and places checked off, this one was measured in simpler pleasures: my morning swim, biting into a succulent peach, the moonrise from my bedroom balcony, the sweaty uphill walk back from the beach. Not coincidentally, they seemed to orbit around Casa di Legna, our rental home for the week. Every seasoned traveler knows the venue can make or break a vacation. A great house makes you reconsider your plans to leave. Casa di Legna did that daily. Perched above the Tyrrhenian Sea, it somehow managed to be both sophisticated and completely unpretentious. Every window framed something worth staring at. Every terrace chair seemed positioned by someone who understood the importance of doing absolutely nothing. Leaving the house often felt like a questionable decision. Of course, we left anyway.
There were daily walks around the neighborhood, the kind that remind me how much better movement feels when it has a destination—particularly a stunning beach, below. There were post-coffee swims, which should frankly occur more often.
There was the trek up into Bonifacio, which manages to be both breathtaking and breath-stealing. There was the long white sand beach walk to Hotel Moby Dick (immediately below), nestled in the pine-fringed bay of Santa Giulia and a visit to Cala Rossa, where my sister and I met up with my LA-based friend Meg Strachan—a reminder that no matter how far you travel, someone you know is always somehow nearby.
And then there was the fruit. Plums that dripped down my chest. Melons that tasted concentrated. The flowers deserve honorable mention too. They seemed to erupt from every corner of the island in saturated shades of pink, hot pink, red, and violet—like bursts of fireworks.
But not every discovery was a success. Our much-anticipated day trip to Sardinia included a lunch at a restaurant solely accessible by boat. However, it was, by a wide margin, the most offensively expensive meal of our lives--and food-wise, the least memorable. My brother-in-law kept asking if the prices on the menu were in lire! (His wife/my sister retorted that we'd somehow wandered into a Monopoly economy.) The bill was so jaw-dropping it actually rendered me speechless, and I briefly considered washing the dishes for the rest of the day and/or forwarding the check to the friend who recommended the restaurant. I'm declining to share the restaurant’s name. Not out of gatekeeping, but out of public service!
Fortunately, Corsica’s cuisine compensated. Most meals seemed to consist of little more than impeccably fresh fish, local produce, and olive oil, usually whipped up together at home. What I loved most, though, wasn’t any single dinner, beach cove, or snorkeling session. It was the rhythm that emerged: Wake early, apply an excessive amount of really good sunscreen and a hair mask, swim, wander, lunch, read, swim again. Watch the light shift. Feel the intensity of the sun soften. Repeat. Naturally, multiple outfit changes were involved.
The longer I stayed, the more I noticed small things. The way the wind would suddenly shift in late afternoon. How the sea changed personality by the hour. How sunrise colors and sunset colors somehow told entirely different stories.
I came home reminded that attention is perhaps the most luxurious thing we can indulge in. The kind that allows you to notice the breeze changing direction. A peach at perfect ripeness. And even how being back home feels good too.
Simple pleasures - agreed. I am having coffee in an airbnb outside Red Lodge, Montana. Absolute silence except for a red-winged blackbird.