As the sun came up in the east we could see the Emerald coast of Sardinia in the distance on our port side. Late in the morning as Godfrey Wettinger was presenting a fascinating lecture on the Crusades and the Knights of St. John of Malta, the ship raced through the Straits of Bonifacio, which divides the island of Corsica from Sardinia. These islands may be close geographically, but emotionally and culturally they are worlds apart.
Our destination for today was the small cliff-top fortress village of Bonifacio on the extreme southern tip Corsica. The 200-foot high white chalk cliffs that hide the entrance to this spectacular town were used as the setting for the "Guns of Navarone" and one could see the high ledge where Gregory Peck and David Niven jumped from in the final scene. Once through the cut, the bow thrusters came on in full force, as Captain Joakim Saeterskog literally had to turn the ship through 360o while holding position. Truly a show in ship handling and navigation.
The afternoon was spent exploring the town Bonifacio, which was established around 800 A.D. because of its strategic location vis-a-vis controlling the maritime trade in this part of the Mediterranean. We were transported to the upper city by small train on wheels, which saved us the 500 steps up a series of very steep stairs without handrails.
Our trolley trip took us up past the now deserted barracks of the famous French Foreign Legion to the western point of peninsula where the World War II gun emplacements face out to a now peaceful sea. We wandered among the paths that separated the mausoleums of the village families until stopping in front of the monument to the fallen from the Crimean War and the conflicts in the Sudan more than a century ago, and realized that wars were still being waged in these areas today.
We strolled on foot through the narrow alleys of the upper city discovering a house where a young Napoleon Bonaparte and an older Emperor Charles V had once spent a few days.
On our return we had found that the crew had turned the pool deck into a festive setting for an early evening deck barbecue.
