Corsica 1983
A vacation on the island in early April 1983
It is the fourth-largest island in the Mediterranean and lies southeast of the French Mainland, west of the Italian Peninsula. The island may belong to France, but it looks and feels Italian. This was our experience when we visited in early April 1983.
We got married half a year ago and were still living in Switzerland at the time. Our immigration documents for Canada were in the works. This was our last chance to take a quiet vacation before the big move.
We were actively windsurfing back then and the windsurf boards were always with us. We drove an Opel Kadet and spent many weekends driving to the windsurfing hot spots like St. Moritz and Lake Como. We had the boards with us, but didn't go out during our stay.
We travelled inland and found some very unique places to eat. We entered a ristorante with simple interior, just chairs and tables on a concrete floor. They didn't have a written menu, but immediately started serving when we asked for the menu. It was a 5-course meal for a ridiculously low price. We may have left too big of a tip, but it was worth it.
We took the ferry from Genova in Italy to Bastia, Corsica. All the information here is from our memory, 39 years later. Record keeping was not a priority. Little did we know that there would be an Internet in the future, where we can share our old picutres with the world.
Enough about ourselves and on with Corsica the way we found it in early April 1983.
>
Looking at current pictures, Bonifacio still looks the same. You just can not improve on that.
Sandy beaches, rocky beaches, hidden beaches or cliffs, you can find them all.
Looking at our old pictures and comparing them to the Corsica travel websites, we could identify many of the old buildings. Nice to see that they are still standing. However, the harbours have changed a lot. We don't remember seeing so many sail and power boats moored at the docks. The beaches were mostly deserted, we had them to ourselves. Maybe we visited too early in the year and the tourist rush was not yet in full gear. It was a memorable vacation.
Scanning old slides
These images were shot with a Minolta SLR from the early 1970. The slides have been stored for almost 40 years and they didn't age well. Unless the exposure was exactly right and the contrast range was within a limited range, the dark features of the image were lost.
The scanner is an HP flatbed scanner with a film/slide option in the lid. The software runs on Windows XT. This combination of old pictures, old scanner and old software took a lot of work to get some acceptable pictures.
The scanner at 600 or 1200 dpi produced reasonable image which was then fixed with Corel Photo Shop Pro X9. Most of them were resized to 380 pixel width and the results are the pictures you see here.
To finish this project, we had to accept some flawed results. But keep in mind, our goal was to publish pictures of Corsica the way we enjoyed the island in 1983.
Photographed on April 01, 1983 Digitized on February 11, 2022 | Contact Us Help |