It's raining now in Lucca, so it's time to write about the beach: mid-September, right after school started here, we went to the Island of Elba.

From Lucca you take the highway towards Pisa Nord, then towards Livorno, go on South until you get to Piombino, where you head towards the harbor. There you take a ferry, which takes about an hour to get to Portoferraio, the main port on the island. 2 companies offer trips to the Island: Moby and Toremar. You can book your trip online, there are departures more or less every hour.

So Elba is a little far for a day trip, but certainly very convenient for a weekend.

Elba is quite small, 25 km by 20 km, so you're always less than an hour away from any place you want to go (the roads are narrow and winding, so you won't drive fast though). With over 140 km of coast line, it offers plenty of beaches. We found a little booklet at the news stand that listed all of them, with a description, pictures, and a summary of ammenities, that helped us a lot. Note that the German version of the book was much more prominently displayed in the store, which probably gives you a good hint about where most of the tourists come from ;--)

We stayed in Pareti, right on the beach, on the South coast, near the beautiful town of Capoliveri. We got a mini appartment (tiny, but which could sleep up to 5 people) at Hotel Villamare for €65 a night. A great deal (remember this was off-season). The weather was still quite warm, and we sure enjoyed the warn Mediterranean waters.

Other highlights of the trip:

• the food at La Taverna dei Poeti (The Poets Tavern) in Capoliveri, where the fish was really, really fresh (there are plenty of other restaurants in Capoliveri by the way!),
• feeding the pigeons and the fish in Porto Azzuro with an old man that reminisced about the good old days when bordellos were cheap (really!),
• the old open-air iron mine Rio Marina: a little train takes you up the hill, the guide is very knowledgeable, and you can pick shiny rocks from the earth, our son loved it,
• the opera crazy barber in Rio Marina and his singing brother, where else than in Italy can you spend an hour discussing the merits of various opera singers with your barber?
• the Caribean-looking beach in Campo All'Aia, complete with palm trees and cruise ship anchored in the bay.

Overall an great weekend, the island wasn't too crowded, although I supposed it would be different in the high season, and it offered a great mix of beach, mountain landscapes, good food and unusual activities. We will certainly go back there.

And finally a message from our son Tonio, which he typed himself (in Italian): ci sono tante foto (there are so many photos), as he took lots and lots of them during that weekend.

posted by michel, 2007-11-24