Read our full report on Corsica, and lots more, in your February issue...out now
“The luminous hour before sunset is special. Every bay is a brilliant turquoise. Villages take on a honeyed glow; vineyards are dusted with gold; mountain crags flare orange. Out to the west, rocky islets change from dusky pink to a deep blood-red,” writes Steenie Harvey in the February issue of International Living magazine.
Dramatic, unspoiled, sensual, the island she’s talking about is anchored 100 miles south of the Côte d’Azur, and it’s a mystery to most North Americans. In fact, this island is so far under the radar that even a travel writer can forget it’s the western Mediterranean’s third-largest.
Its 800-mile coastline is punctuated with small resorts, fishing ports and medieval citadel towns that could have been stolen from Italy. Its summers last longer than anywhere in mainland France. There are orchards, chestnut woods and olive groves…
The balconies of bougainvillea-draped hill villages look out over silver beaches and azure-blue seas… Everywhere smells fragrant. The air is perfumed with sage and rosemary, myrtle and eucalyptus… Spring delivers riots of wildflowers; fall a harvest festival of grapes, mushrooms, olives and apricots…
This is Corsica…and these are just some of the reasons it’s called France’s Île de Beauté (Isle of Beauty). Amazing ocean views, affordable real estate and delicious food are others and in this month’s feature story Steenie reveals more…
Elsewhere in the February issue, Robert Cook tells IL Panama editor, Jessica Ramesch, how he traded up his old life for a dream retirement in Panama. When Robert sold his house and car, quit his job in Kansas City, and took off to Panama six years ago, his friends asked him if he was on drugs.
Now, he says, they envy him.
Robert settled in the idyllic highland town of Boquete, in Panama’s Chiriqui Highlands, where temperatures from the low 70’s F to the mid-80s F make for a near-perfect climate. The cost of living is so low here that making this slice of paradise your new home is easy.
Editor’s note: Cheaper than the rest of the Riviera, but no less enchanting, Corsica is an island where you can definitely trade up to a better life overseas—in fact, it could be Steenie’s best trip yet—and to celebrate the fact, if you subscribe to IL magazine now, you’ll also receive our new report The Retirement Rescue Strategy: How to Trade Up to a Better Life This Year, Even if You Haven’t Saved a Dime. Read about Corsica, Boquete and lots more in the February issue of International Living magazine.
