Location: Bonifacio Corsica
Greetings. Let me start off by saying that spending the summer sailing the Med is an amazing experience. We have seen so many interesting and beautiful towns, churches, and landscapes and eaten some of the best gelatos in the world. But sacrifices had to be made in order to experience all these remarkable things, and one sacrifice, in particular, has been especially hard for the crew of Argo to bear ……missing the opening of Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows Part 2. Since day one, the crew has had countless conversations and debates about the merits of the Harry Potter books, movies, favorite characters, worst curses, and so on. Andrew also claims to have found at least seven places where he is absolutely sure a scene from Harry Potter was filmed. All along our trip, we have found similarities between our adventure and Harry Potter’s, but today was too full of similarities not to warrant a mention. We began our day with an early morning motor to Bonifacio, arriving outside the city around 8 AM, and it was quite a sight to see… the city was quite literally clinging to the cliffs. Before we went into port, the staff surprised us with the opportunity to go swimming in a large cave. Once inside the cave, it did not take us long to come to a consensus that this cave was, in fact, a perfect place to hide a Horcrux. And so began our “HP” day. After docking, we all went on a hike to a lighthouse and secluded beach. Along the way, we found a path leading to a look-out point, the path was cut from thick tall hedges, and we were all reminded of the maze in the Tri-Wizard Tournament. Luckily, there was no large spider to riddle our way past, and we were rewarded with a beautiful view of the coast instead of a duel with Voldemort. The rest of the hike was beautiful, but there were some gigantic, steep hills, and a few comments were muttered about wishing we had the ability to apparate. After the nice morning hike, we started our exploration of the city itself; curving streets, old brick buildings and streets, cute cafes, and interesting stores in every direction made us feel like we were in Diagon Alley.
Olvandar’s were nowhere to be seen, but we did find the equivalent of a Honeyduke’s. A pirate-themed candy shop with so much candy we had to walk through single file to fit countless barrels of sweets and chocolates! The crew and staff spent a pretty penny here and hopefully will not have too bad of a stomach ache tomorrow. Dinner reservations were made for 8 PM at a nice restaurant right on the dock. The girls had fun getting ready; we all wore dresses, and the guys looked very classy in their button-down shirts and slacks. All we needed were some robes, and we would have been ready for the Christmas Ball. After a very tasty dinner, we hiked up to a lookout point and had a fantastic twilight view of the city, harbor, and coastline, a wonderful way to end our remarkable day.