Residence Marine de Bravone on Corsica

On our second trip to Corsica we took the early ferry from Livorno. Departure at 9am, latest check in at 8am and leaving our hotel at 7am to have some buffer. This turned out to be a good idea because although we got to the harbour in about 20 minutes it took us a bit of time to find the right entry into the harbour. The signalling sent us to a dead end with luckily some person at the gate directing everyone to another entry. We simply followed the car in front of us together with gps instructions and made it to the queue in time. It was a typical Italian queue with cars next to each other on lanes that don`t exist. Luckily we had some prior experience with Italian traffic and knew the trick is to ignore the existance of other lanes and go slow. We got onto the parking lot to queue around 8am and had to wait a while before boarding started. It was an impressive ferry with ramps between decks that could be pneumatically operated to be raised, lowered or leveled. From our previous crossing we knew that a cabin was essential for passenger well being. We got on board and went straight to the cabin. Around 10:30 we had breakfast which was already over but a nice waiter did help us to our breakfast. Not exactly excellent fair but still as good as can be expected. After arriving on Corsica we looked for a place to have lunch along the road. This turned out to be more challenging than we thought because most places were closed on Sunday. We did find something but the standard restaurant was also closed and we could only get some sandwiches and prepacked salads which we could still eat in the restaurant. And after ordering at the counter the orders were also still delivered to our table. But the options were limited again. Not a culinary day. After lunch we decided to stop at a supermarket along the way to be sure we would at least have the ingredients to make our own food in the evening. We had booked an apartment in Residence Marine de Bravone which is a fenced off compound with access to the beach. The apartment was nice, 2 separate bedrooms, with airco, shutters and a balcony with an electric grill. The only thing that was not so nice was the quality of the pans and pots which had been obviously abused by previous visitors. This meant we ended up keeping dinner basic with salads, sausages and boiled potatoes typically on the evenings that we cooked ourselves. The Marine de Bravone is located on the east coast, roughly half way between Bastia and Bonifacio. We picked the residence because it was close to the beach, 200m and our kids could go for a swim whenever we were in the apartment with no plans to out. We stayed 9 nights and went to the beach 3 to 4 times in the afternoon, my wife going a couple of times early in the morning. The water was warm and the beach never very crowded, you could always find a good spot a little distance away from others.