Leaving Elba and our evening in Florence

One of the kids favorite things about our hotel was the breakfast. Here is a picture of them eating breakfast on the balcony of the last morning.

We drove to the port city of Portoferraio on the early side (recall my post about the hectic experience boarding the ferry on the mainland side). We were glad to find a park and we ate lunch at a pizzeria on the beach.

Christopher chased pigeons in the park.

The view from the park was fabulous.

The situation on the dock was much more calm on the island side. Christopher got to watch the ferry unloading cars, semi trucks, three ambulances and a watermelon truck. It was a very exciting show right out his window of the car.
Once we were on the ferry we said goodbye to Elba. It was a lovely place to spend our vacation.


Anna got right to work making friends with some girls in the play structure. She always manages to get along with other children, even if they don't speak more than a few words of English.


A word about our car...

I failed to comment earlier on our car. Wade ordered a car for 4 people who would have luggage. We ended up with a Ford Galaxy. While I won't say that this was the largest car in Italy, it was certainly the largest in Siena. The Galaxy was truly as large as a galaxy. It comfortably held two sleeping children (while reclined mind you...nice feature for kids seats). All of our luggage fit perfectly in the trunk and...

the dashboard was large enough to hold an entire pizza. I should mention that we could easily have fit two more pizzas on the same dashboard. It was immense.From the car window I took this picture of the rainbow that showed up as we approached Florence.

Below is a picture of Anna in the courtyard of our hotel in Florence. Wade took a risk and found a great place online for us to stay for our last night--the Quadra Key. It was like a mini-apartment with a kitchen and the kids were thrilled to once again have their own bedroom. A great place to stay with kids and not too far from the airport.
We weren't sure how much time we would end up having to spend in the city. However, it ended up that the timing was perfect and allowed us to take a quick picture in front of the fake David in Piazza Vecchio (Jaime, this is for you since it's the only picture of the belly that will make the blog).

We had a lovely dinner at Taverna Divinea Comedie and finished the night with a stroll through the streets that took us to Piazza Repubblica.
The kids cannot go to Florence without riding the merry-go-round and having gelato.

Tomorrow morning we leave on the early flight for Rome and then head home to Boston. It's been a lovely vacation.

Elba

We made it a point to drive the entire length of the island of Elba. Driving on the island is a lot like driving in the Alps. The roads are really skinny and the turns are really sharp. The difference is that driving in the Alps is dangerous because you feel like you're going to fall off the road and down into a crevasse. On Elba you feel like you might fall off the road and into the Mediterranean Sea.

This picture is looking back on a road that we had just driven where I thought for sure we were going into the Sea.

Our hotel was located right in the center of the island. We drove all the west one day, and all the way east another day. Each drive takes a few hours. The west end of the island is steep and rocky and full of mountains. It is very open to the coast and you can see the Sea the entire time. The east end of the island has a more tropical feeling. Though we have never been to South America, we decided that the east end of Elba probably feels somewhat like a rainforest. There are lots of trees with hanging vines and there are small boulders in the middle of the road that have tumbled down from the mountains. There are beaches along the entire route, both west and east, and each beach has a slightly different feel...some are rocky, some are sandy, some are public and some are private with restaurants and bars.

From the northwest corner of the island you can see Sardinia.

There are tiny towns, like this one, along the entire length of the island.There are tons of sailboats on all sides of the island. The island is really unusual in that it has many coves that are very protected from the Sea. Each evening these little areas fill up with sailboats who wish to spend the night in the protected coves.

Wade was a fan of this particular J-boat that we saw in Porto Azzurro for a few days. It was a huge and beautiful boat with a wooden mast that was super tall. I'm sure he secretly wished to be invited on board, but we never saw the crew of this boat in the marina, so we just viewed it from afar.

The towns of Elba

As I mentioned in the prior post, we made a point to drive the entire island. However, we pretty much stayed in two cities to eat and stroll. We had dinner three times in Porto Azzurro.

Here are the kids and Wade on our first night in Porto Azzurro. It's a cute little city with an active marina. Lots and lots of people come off of their sailboats and have dinner in the city. We mostly heard Dutch and German being spoken around us. Like our other recent trips to Italy, we didn't meet many Americans on this trip. In fact, we only met one American woman who lives near Milan but is originally from Long Island. This area is mostly frequented by northern European vacationers.

Another evening in Porto Azzurro after dinner at Osteria la Botte Gaia (my second most favorite meal on the island), having gelato by the marina.Capoliveri is the other town we visited. We had dinner at a fabulous place called Trattoria dei Quattro Rioni. I had the best meal of the entire vacation here. Delicious gnocchi with duck ragu and a steak with roasted potatoes. We happened to go to Capoliveri on the night of their annual jazz festival. Had we known this we probably would have stayed far away, but it ended up being a really good decision.

Here are the kids (you can barely see them between the two saxophone players) watching a roving street band that decided to stop and play right in front of us.


In the piazza there was a large concert with modern music. Again, something we probably would have avoided had we known it was there, but it ended up being a really great band that played Italian music. We all had a fabulous time.
And of course we had gelato in Capoliveri.
And here are the kids on our last night on Elba. We ate dinner at Delfino Verde in Porto Azzurro and enjoyed some delicious seafood. Like most vacation towns in Italy, this little town has a merry-go-round.

Of course we had to have gelato on our last night on the island.

Tomorrow we head to Florence and then it's back home. We're not sure how much we'll get to do in Florence, but if it proves to be anything interesting, I'll write a quick post about it.

We've gone to the beach

Since we've been on Elba we've settled into a very predictable pattern. We get up, have breakfast at the hotel and decide which beach we will go to for the day. We stay at the beach until mid-afternoon, then come back to the hotel and swim in the pool. We get showered and ready for dinner and explore one of the towns on Elba for dinner. Repeat.

Literally, we have done the same thing three times. We make little changes here and there, but this pattern seems to suit us so we're sticking with it.

So far we've gone to Lacona Beach...

Procchio Beach...

and Lido Beach.

Anna and I have collected lots of sea glass to supplement our collection and we're experts at the whole chair and umbrella rental experience that seems to be required in this part of the world.

Here are the kids back at the pool at our hotel.

Anna is working on perfecting her diving here in Elba. The pool is super deep (it's not labeled, but we're guessing 12 feet) so it's a great place to learn to dive.

More tomorrow...

On to Elba!

It was a tearful goodbye at Borgo Villa Risi. Anna was sad to leave her friends. However, by the time we approached the port at Piombino we were all looking forward to the next part of our trip. The ferry dock is like most things in Italy...completely crazy with no rules and very little instruction. Yet somehow, it all gets done. We got ourselves and our car, along with hundreds of other people and at least 75 other cars onto the ferry for Elba.

We didn't really know what to expect of the ferry and the kids were very happy to find a play structure right on the boat.

It was a one-hour trip across the sea.

Our hotel, Relais delle Picchiaie, is really lovely. Our room is perfect. We have a large room for Wade and I and a separate room with two twin beds for the kids. They love that their side of the room has a sitting area, a fridge and its own TV. Tomorrow we'll go exploring the island and see what we can find.

So far, we've found this beautiful view (from the parking lot).

And this view (from the breakfast area).