For the first week of my summeer vacation, I went to isola d'elba (Island of Elba). This island is just off the coast of mainland italy and belongs to Toscana (Tuscany). It requires a 1 hour ferry ride from the mainland to get there.
Here is a map of part of Tuscany. In the upper right hand corner you can see Firenze (Florence).
In the lower left hand corner you can see Isola d'Elba. It is in the Mar Tirreno (Tyrrenian Sea).
A little bit South of Elba and off the map is the island of Montecristo. And to the left and off the
map is the larger island of Corsica, which belongs to France. This area has a lot of history, going
all the way back to the Etruscans.
There are small cities and towns dotting the entire coast of Elba. The beaches come in all sizes and colors. Some of the most beautiful beaches were hard to walk on with jagged pebbles pushing up on the soles of your feet. Other beaches have the classic soft sand, but seem a bit dirtier.
The traghetto (ferry boat) drops you off at the city of portoferraio. This is the place where
Napolean stayed when he was banished from France. That is an entire story in itself and I leave
it to you to read the history books. I did take a short tour of the house he stayed in, which is
part of a fort on a hillside.
Of the larger cities on the island, I found portoferraio to have the most things to look at.
This is a picture of forte stella (Fort Stella). It is part of the compound that housed Napolean.
An interesting drive is to go around the western end of the island. You will be greeted by
plenty of steep cliffs and abrubt curves in the road. The little
town of Pomonte is nestled in a gulley next to the water. The buildings come just a few meters to
waters edge, which has large slabs of rocks that make good sitting places for swimmers.
At 10AM on a july morning, swimmers were already fanning out onto the rocks.
Our search for the optimum beach eluded us as we continued around the western zone. Only later did
we realize we passed up several prime spots. But, there is no way to see many of the beaches from
the road because you have to drive down extremely steep gorges to get to the waters edge. This pic
shows a beach in the distance and it is far below the road. Note the pink house in the right side
of the picture. There were many pinkish and other lightly colored houses in this area.
The road ascended upwards and we came upon a mountain town called Marciana. A small community of
people reside there and live out their lives in that small town. Here we can see one of the locals
working in his trade. Not sure what he was making, but it looked like some kind of weaving project.
Note how the pinkish colored houses create a warm ambiance in this otherwise shadey back alley.
Before descended down towards the coast, we found a cable car ride that takes you to the highest
point on the island, Mt Capanne. At 1019 meters, it is the dominating feature of the island. We
got onto the cable car, which can only fit two people in each compartment and took the quiet
journey to the top of the mountain. There was no wind that day and the only sounds were the
creeking noises coming from the towers that held the cable up. Once at the top, I looked back
at the small mountain town of Marciana.
The small town of marciana has it's sister city of marciana marina, which is at the water's edge.
Shown here, just to the right of that jaggedy rock edifice, is the thriving town of
marciana marina. After we took the return trip on the cable car, we took a steep road down to this
city and had a swim. But first, a look out onto the Eastern part of the island ....
Standing ontop of Mt Capanne and looking Eastward towards mainland Italy, this is the view you get.
Now we make our way down the mountain and towards the sea to the town of marciana marina. The main
beach there was next to a bunch of parked boats and I wanted to swim in water that was fresher.
The beach on the other side of a small peninsula looked much better. It is called spiaggia fenicia.
Spiaggia means beach in Italian. This is a composite photo of the beach head.
While going for a swim here,
I felt a sharp prick on my forearm. I looked around and didn't see anything. It was only a very small area
of intense pain about the size of a pin head, but it continued to sting for several hours.
There was an obvious swollen mark on my forearm the size of an american 25 cent piece coin for at least 7 more hours.
We deduced that it was probably some kind of jelly fish or medusa.
Whatever it was, it was extremely potent. I would hate to have caught the full brunt of that creature on my face.
One interesting feature of spiaggia fenicia was the torre (tower) on the small peninsula. I'm not sure what the tower is for,
but it's probably an old light house from hundreds of years ago. Before I got stung by the jelly fish, I started to swim around
a rocky peninsula. But, some bigger waves kicked up and I scraped my toe against a rock and decided to turn back.
After several hours of swimming and beach combing at spiaggia fenicia, there was still time for another
beach. We made our way back across the island towards the very small town of Cavoli. Almost there, was
another smaller and harder to get at beach called spiaggia palombaia.
I had seen in a tour guide book some pictures of a beach with brilliant white sand and rocks. It was
called spiaggia di capo bianco. The next day we went there. It was perhaps the most beautiful beach
because of the white rocks and the contrasting greenish and torquoise water. But, it was very difficult
to walk on and I got several cuts on my toes. In fact, I was running out of toes to get cuts on. I almost had a
bandaid on every toe from all the small scrapes.
Within a minute, sizeable waves could well up and if you were on the water's edge, the palm sized rocks would be thrown everywhere and bash
against your ankles and toes. When this happened, it was just below the threshold of pain and could be tolerated.
The sound of the thousands of rocks sliding and churning against each other created an musical chorus of chaos and was very therapeutic.
In all, this is a great place to spend a few days or a week. It was recommended to me by a friend and I would recommend it to anybody who is a good swimmer or snorkler. Hotels come in all sizes and price ranges.
From Florence, you can make it to Portoferraio in under 3 hours by car and ferry.