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.