10 Day Corsica Itinerary Suggestions Appreciated!

Regarding hikes- we did a very nice hike an easy short drive from Corte- from Restonica to Lac de Melu. There were a few places where you had to scramble a bit and pull yourself up with chains but overall not extremely difficult. The hiking in that area is lovely.

If you want something longer, there's the full GR20 which is meant to be beautiful but quite challenging: https://gr20.co.uk/. You can also look at doing parts of it.

Thank you!

We went in September 2024, for two weeks. With just 10 days, you will have to make some hard trade-offs. That said, we loved everyplace we went (and we drove all the way around the Island). Regarding the places you asked about:

Remember, "two nights" anyplace usually gets you one day of time to be there and enjoy the place, so with limited time and a lot of moving around, be careful not to expect too much time to go and do things. With 10 days and your 4 locations, the math suggests to me you may be spending more time in the car than hiking, but there's no shortage of great stuff to see/do/hike all over the island, however you choose to do it - just be prepared to prioritize (we had 2 weeks for Corsica, and I left thinking 3 weeks would be a better, more realistic plan if you hope to get around to all parts of the island and see highlights - for example, you will be skipping the west coast entirely, which is stunning and had some of our favorite places...but we traded away pretty much the entire east coast, so you have to make choices).

For the northeast, we used Saint Florent as our base, and stayed at Hôtel La Roya. It was delightful (and had an awesome breakfast spread). I'd stay there again without hesitation. You will need most of a day just to circumnavigate the Cap Corse peninsula.

We didn't spend much time in/around L'Ill Rousse. We stopped for an hour or so on our way through, and it seemed to be pleasant enough (though appeared more touristy than most places we went - ferries from the mainland go there so it's clearly very popular). We pushed on to Calvi, which we loved.

We only stopped in Corte as an overnight on our way to our departure airport (Calvi) so we only got an afternoon and evening there. It's a nice old university town, lots of young people (I recall very loud recorded music booming out over the town on the Friday night we stayed there, I needed to use earplugs to sleep). The town itself is pleasant and the surrounding mountains were pretty. We stayed our short night there at Hôtel U Passa Tempu, which was basic, not fancy or special, but met our modest needs (it was mostly just a place to sleep on our last night before heading to the airport to fly out to Strasbourg).

I wished we would have had more time to explore the island's interior, but we were circumnavigating it's coast. We didn't go to Bastelica.

In Bonafacio (which we LOVED), we stayed at Hotel Santateresa, which was pretty awesome - a perfect location on the edge of the the old town, literally just steps to all the good stuff. Highly recommended. Bonafacio is spectacular. Be sure to do the stairway!

We absolutely loved Corsica. Some photos from our trip there in September 2024.

Bon chance!

Thanks so much for all of this information! It’s very helpful. We had been debating whether to reduce the number of stays. It seems like combining Saint Florent and Ill Rousse would make the most sense?

We are flying into Bastia and out of Figari. It seems like maybe you went in and out of Calvi?

So we are mapping our itinerary north to south. We don’t arrive until late on the first day. Would it makes sense to have 5 nights / 4 full days based in Saint Florent eliminating stay in Ill Rousse but still exploring that area as day trips — then going to middle for 2 nights then Bonafacio for 3 nights / 2 days (alt would be to take a day from the north and add to Bonafacio)? Unfortunately, the hotel you recommend is not available for our dates.

Appreciate your insights!

Well, fewer locations is a tradeoff, too: less moving around gives you more time to spend in the places that you choose, but doing day-trips out-and-back involves more driving, and having fewer "bases" tends to limit the places you choose to go. So it's a tough call.

We flew into Bastia (arriving late in the day, just before sunset), picked up our car and immediately drove straight to Saint Florent. We spent 4 nights there and used it as our base. Spent the next few days in Bastia, up and around Cap Corse, in and around Saint Florent itself, and nearby spots to the south/west. After Saint Florent, we headed west along the coast, and followed the coast all the way around to Bonifacio. Here's a rough map showing were we flew in to, out of, and where we spent each night in between. Corsica Map - Flights & Accoms ("moon-and-star" symbol indicates each overnight). As you can see, we spent a good portion of the trip (roughly half our time) along the west coast (which we loved). But we pretty much skipped the entire east coast south of Bastia, and I'm sure there's great stuff there, too.

You could probably do L'Ill Rousse and Calvi as a day trip from Saint Florent (remember, we spent no time in L'Ill Rousse so can't judge how worthwhile it is, it did look intriguing). That would probably be a long day in the car (out-and-back) so be realistic and kind to yourself, after the (presumably) long flights to get to Corsica.

The places that really wowed us most were primarily along the west coast, and Bonifacio (we liked the other places too, but the west coast and Bonifacio were the places that left us slack-jawed in awe). You're not doing the west coast, but maybe there's equally good stuff on the east coast, and the interior looked very attractive too, when we blew through it (it took us most of a day to drive from Bonifacio to Corte, and we could see the mountains looked great).

We had 3 nights and two full days in Bonifacio, and could easily have added another day there - but I wouldn't want to have taken it from anyplace else. The eternal rub of prioritization, trade-offs and hard choices. "We should have given this trip another week" is a phrase I find myself muttering at the end of too many trips.

We flew into Bastia (Bastia by far has the most flight options) and we flew out of Calvi (only because there was a unique flight there that got us straight to Strasbourg, which was part of an elaborate scheme to get home - long story, but it all gave us a few "bonus days" in Alsace, which was very nice, but an unconventional way to get back home to Seattle that many would call crazy). Calvi has relatively few flights, we just found one that worked well for us. Both airports are pretty easy to deal with.

Hope this is useful. have fun.

Again, thank you very much for all the detailed information. It is very useful as we’re thinking through our options. You now have us considering whether we stay on the West Coast or stay with the plan to go inland to Corte for 2 nights between north and south. With our number of days, it seems that we must pick one or the other. Your photos from the West Coast looks stunning and are very much what we like… things to think about!