Elba

I have so much to report and I’m weeks behind... maybe I'll try to give the reader's digest version, though that’s generally impossible for me.

This weekend we went to Elba, the island off the west coast of Italy where Napoleon was exiled. It is an absolutely beautiful place, dotted with little beach towns though mostly covered with semi-tropical vegetation and windblown rock faces. We left Florence at 5:30 Friday morning so we could spend the whole day in Elba. We had a 2.5 hour train ride to the port town of Piombino and then an hour by ferry to the town where we were staying, Portoferraio (literally, "iron port"). We walked up a steep hill to get to our hotel, which had a direct view of the sea. The room where I stayed with my friends Indiana and Gabriela even had a little balcony that looked right out on the Tyrrhenean Sea, complete with a table, chairs and an umbrella. Naturally, I started both my mornings in Elba gazing at the water. After we got checked into the hotel and settled we went straight to the beach. Elba has a million little beaches, some of which you can only get to by boat or by hiking down one of the cliffs, so it wasn't weird for our hotel to share a private beach with a few other hotels. The beach was rocky, but the water was warm and the day was cloudless. After a couple of hours my friends Zach and Federico got a little bored, so they rented Vespas and rode to the next town over to see about renting a boat. They called us to say that they would come pick us up at the beach if we would go get something to eat and bring it with us.

Thus began the boating adventure. We had passed a little market on the way to the hotel, so we walked back down the hill. But by the time we got there, it was lunch time and the market was closed. So Indiana and I went on a grand tour of Portoferraio to find a market that was open. We ended up following signs to the Coop, a big Italian grocery chain. It wasn't very much different from an American grocery chain, but of course we didn't know where we were going, so we ran all over to find the things we wanted. We had already told the boys to meet us at a certain beach with the boat, so we hurried there as fast as we could after we finished our shopping. But when we got to the beach, we saw Zach swimming in to talk to the lifeguards. The guy at the boat rental place had told Zach and Federico that they could cut the boat’s motor and row into shore at any beach, but this was apparently not the case at public beaches such as the one we were standing on. One option was to dump a bunch of our stuff on the beach and swim out the considerable distance to the boat, but we all had our cameras and phones, so that idea was vetoed. We spent a couple minutes in complete frustration and some of our group opted out in the process, but soon enough we were on a paddle boat that the lifeguard let us use (for free) to get out to the motor boat with all of our stuff. Federico and Indiana took the pedal boat back to shore, and then swam out to meet the rest of us. Once we got on the boat, the rest of the afternoon was beautiful. We went almost halfway around the island and got to see a bunch of the small towns and beaches, as well as some beautiful sailboats. I got to drive the boat for awhile and was even promoted to First Mate! We put our anchor down for a little while and jumped off the boat into the sea – the water was so clear you could see to the rocky bottom. I have no idea how deep the water was; all I know was that it was much deeper than a swimming pool and I’ve never been in water that deep in my life.

Getting back to shore was not the problem that getting off of it was, and we went back to our hotel, took showers, and went out to eat. I had a great “frutti di mare” appetizer with all different sorts of fish and shellfish, prepared in ways I’ve never seen before. My mussels were cooked traditionally, but my tuna salad had very unique herbs in it, and there was some sort of meat with a sweet sauce and raisins that was absolutely heavenly. My plate even had some octopus on it, I think, which was really good. I had pasta with seafood in it for dinner, but some of the others had the fish of the day, which was brought out on a big cart before it was cooked for them to choose the exact fish they wanted. I would have had no idea what to do, but they got it taken care of and it was some of the best fish I’ve ever tasted. After dinner we agreed to get up pretty early the next morning to head out on a kayaking adventure across the island: we would get up, rent Vespas to go to the other side of the island, then spend some time on one of the sand beaches and take a guided kayaking tour.

Similar to the boating incident, said kayaking adventure didn’t quite occur as planned. Those who were originally planning to go woke up at 8 am as we had planned and went to breakfast. But by the time we had gotten everything together and were ready to head out to the auto rental place to get our Vespas, some other people were awake and interested in coming with – which was fine, but it sort of ruined our organization. So we ended up running down the big hill of our town to the rental place to get there before 10 o’clock and then changing vehicles and driving partners several times. In other words, it was mass chaos for about 20 minutes, which I didn’t handle very well (I don’t deal well with broken plans, as some of you may know). But just like the boating chaos, we finally got it figured out and I ended up on the back of an ATV with my friend Gabriela. The rest of our original group was able to stay together on Vespas, as we originally planned, and we had a beautiful ride to the other side of the island. By the time we got there the kayaking tours were actually full for the day, but we rented paddle boats, played on the beach, had a huge piece of watermelon for lunch, and just generally chilled. To get back to Portoferraio we decided to ride around the island instead of across it. It ended up being a 2 ½ hour drive, but it was a beautiful, cloudless day and the wind in my hair felt wonderful. The road around the island is right along the coast, so we had gorgeous views of the sea the entire ride. I didn’t want to get off the ATV – I wanted to ride and ride forever.

After the ATV adventure came the dinner adventure. We walked to the historic city center to visit the house where Napoleon spent his exile (not too exciting, but beautiful gardens) and then looked around for a place to eat. We read a bunch of menus, but we finally stopped at “Gambero Rosso” (“Red Shrimp”) because their menu was completely in Italian and completely hand-written, meaning they cooked whatever they happened to get fresh that day. We sat down outside and the owner, Giancarlo, who was also our waiter, immediately started joking with us. In total, dinner took us close to four hours, between all the courses we ordered, all the joking around, and all the time spent waiting for our mussels, but it was a great four hours. I think it’s one of those things that’s just hard to describe if you weren’t there – there are so many little stories, like Giancarlo bringing out a live lobster before he cooked it for Gabriela and telling us it was named Hugo – but I will remember the night for the rest of my life. Giancarlo gave us free appetizers and a huge discount, and told us at the end of the night that we were cute. We sat together well at the table, just enjoying each others’ company and talking, he said. It’s an “art” that young Italians have lost, at least according to him. All in all the night just had that magical quality to it that makes something memorable.

Ok, that’s a brief recounting of last weekend’s adventures… I will try to post soon about this week/weekend and my mom’s visit.