French Aqua Tennis

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Issy's decided that we should spend the morning at the beach. We buy the standard package of two sun lounges and a beach umbrella, for half a day. Fortunately the beach umbrellas in this part of beach are slightly bigger than the ones we saw the other day. If we position our two sun lounges properly it will almost completely shade one of them, leaving only one of us to get sunburnt.

Issy goes for a dip. She comes back again very quickly, looking a bit blue. She says that the water is icy, so I decide to test it for myself. It's about twenty degrees cooler than the last bit of ocean we swam in, although that said I'm not entirely sure that that's a fair comparison; the last time our toes touched the ocean was in the bathwater-hot Persian Gulf. It's cool, but it isn't Southern Ocean Melbourne cool, so I think Issy's temperature gauge might need a bit of recalibrating. The water is crystal clear and the bottom is pure fine sand with no rocks, no shells and no seaweed. Other than the odd ripple in the sand it's very soft on the feet.

Nearly everyone here seems to be French, and most of them seem to be in family groups. Most people in the water seem to be engaging in one of two activities. The most popular of these involves standing in knee deep water talking to the person next to you. The other popular activity seems to be playing tennis with a wooden bat and a small rubber ball. I'm having a bit of trouble trying to understand the rules. In particular I'm not sure whether there's supposed to be a winner and a loser. The game is played with different degrees of seriousness, and the more serious games seem to be played in deeper water. I see one pair playing in chest deep water, which looks to be a bit challenging. One pair of middle aged men is playing what looks to be a very serious game near where I'm swimming. The man who's hitting into the wind seems to be at a serious disadvantage, and he's getting very frustrated. I learn that the four letter English swear word that starts with "'f" and ends in "k" is the same in French. I see one particularly serious game that even seems to have an umpire.

I seem to be swimming a lot further offshore than anyone else, and start wondering whether my fellow bathers know something that I don't. I hope there aren't any Great White Sharks in Corsica.

I get out to find Issy lying happily on the one our two sun lounges that's in the shade, so I decide to leave her in peace and go for a walk along the beach. The beach is very long and crowded, and I suspect that the umbrella and sun lounge rental businesses here must be doing a roaring trade. I watch a group doing aqua aerobics in chest deep water. They all have noodles, and they're trying to dance around in a circle with their noodles between their legs. Their instructor looks very serious, and I don't think I'd want to be the person who got tangled up in their noodle and disrupted the circle.

Issy asks me why we don't have umbrellas and sun lounges for rent on beaches in Australia. I think that maybe this is because Australians see beaches as belonging to everyone, and we don't like the idea that you can rent a bit of one all for yourself. The other possible reason is that people are happy to just sit on the sand in Australia. The beaches that we saw on the French Riviera last year were mostly covered with pebbles, which I suspect might be a tad uncomfortable, so maybe French people have just got used to the idea of renting umbrellas and sun lounges on beaches, even when there aren't any pebbles.

I've been telling Issy for a few days now that I really want to swim off the rocks near our hotel and that I'm going to do this before we leave Corsica if it kills me. I think she thinks that this is exactly what it will do. I tell her to go back to the hotel, but she says that there's no way that she'll let me swim off the rocks unless she's there to watch. I'm not quite sure whether this is to call for help or to laugh. The bottom is very uneven. One minute I seem to be in over my head, and the next I'm banging my knees on rocks. The rocks around the edge are steep and slippery, and it's a bit of a challenge to get out. A lady sitting nearby sees me struggling to haul myself out and offers to help. Just for the record, I think I might have been able to get out by myself.

We walk back up the hill to the hotel. Issy tells me that the light pole in front of her was interrupting her view of the sea. I wonder what she's talking about. You can see the sea from virtually everywhere in Calvi. I then think I hear her telling me that I'm being anal. No surprise there, although I've now totally lost track of the conversation. I then notice that there's a sign just behind the light pole she was referring to that says "canal".

The wifi in the room is still not working, and it hasn't worked since the first day we arrived, so I trudge down to reception to let them know. Unfortunately the receptionist on duty is the one who thinks that I'm a stupid English-speaking person. She tells me that the wifi was broken a few days ago but now it's fixed and working, and she shows me the username and the password that I need to use. I tell her that I've tried these many times. She responds that she can't help. As a stupid English-speaking person it's clearly me who is the problem. I go back up to our room, pull the bed out from the wall as far as I can before it hits the opposite wall, and lie on my back on the floor. I can now see the modem, which is hidden in a compartment behind the bed head. I reach in and find the switch, and turn it off and back on again. The wifi is now working. The temptation to go and break the modem over the receptionist's head is almost irresistible. About the only thing stopping me is the realisation that if I did this we wouldn't have wifi again.

We decide that we'll resist the urge to eat mussels tonight. When we were standing in front of the wrong boat yesterday we saw a restaurant that served seafood platters, so we decide to give that a try. The waiter brings out a supply of nine face wipes, and then gives each of us a set of five implements which look like they belong in a dental surgery - a small fork with two prongs, a medium sized fork with three prongs, a large fork with four prongs, a knife, and a very long thin implement with two very small sharp prongs on the end of it. I get the feeling that the platter is going to be hard work. I also get the feeling that it's going to be messy. It's both. Fortunately it's also very nice.

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Comments

[COG]

Finally a relaxing day! the lounges and umbrellas look really good.