Albergo Gallo Nero Marciana

So everyone we spoke to said how beautiful Elba Island is and we were so excited about getting there. Hmmm.... The weather was still following us. You know the song "everywhere you go you always take the weather with you" or "why does it always rain on me"... they fitted perfectly. The first night we had torrential rain and thunderstorms and honey dew leaked a bit. The day cleared up ...

Non ero mai stato all'Isola d'Elba.
Di solito sceglievo altre mete del Mediterraneo (Grecia, Tunisia, Marocco, Spagna, Sicilia, Sardegna, ecc.) perchè pensavo fosse poco "calda" e poco "mediterranea".
Invece è stata una bellissima sorpresa.

Se devo dare un voto alle spieaggie che ho visto:
Biadola 10, Cavoli 10, Procchio 9, Lacona 7
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... that brought to mind. Then the Isola Pianosa came into view, with Elba also visible in the clouds further ahead. Elba looked unspoilt, with small cliff-top villages perched between the sea and the clouds. Over to the west we could see a high grey profile of Corsica. By about 16:00 we had reached our anchorage ...

... around 12:30pm. It's a pretty big island full of small towns every couple miles. We stayed in the town called Porto Azzurro (I don't remember exactly which direction it was on the island..) and it was very cute. We had a really good pizza for lunch and then went and jumped into the Mediterranean Sea...just because we could. Had a good dinner later that night and then hung out on the beach with ...

... several beautiful buildings, terraced with olives & vineyards, etc. Mercedes got talking to this gentleman in work clothes pushing a wheelbarrow full of rocks. He turned out to be the owner, Alberto (he has a legal practice in Florence) and he invited us in and showed us around the whole property - he gave us some of his tomatoes and figs to try, which were incredibly flavoursome (and he makes the special wine of Elba called Aleatico d'Elba, into which you dunk biscuits called ...

... culture instead of talk about it, are forced to speak languages instead of barely using them and we are not stuck in classrooms all the time. It's a hundred times more interesting listening to long history lectures when I know that the next day I'll be inside a church that was built by one of the main figures in a story. I never wanted to leave Elba, but it wasn't too tough to go back to Firenze, and tomorrow I'm visiting Cinque Terre!

... we took our backpacks with since we are going to stay in Florence tonight. the bus ride went much quicker than to Rome, but it was a morning of thunderstorms. By the time we arrived in Florence it was nice and sunny. our guide took us to several historical places of interest and gave us much history and back ground. at 3 o'clock several of us went with the guide to ...

... if we had walked, but I'm not sure our feet were up to the trek. Once in town, we found a great little restaurant by the ocean built our over the water. It was really quite pleasant and relaxing, and the food was fantastic. We walked around town for a while after lunch and finally caught the bus back to the resort. Dinner back at the resort was also great as usual and very entertaining with a few other couples from the US and ...

Great Island! It belongs to the Tuscany region and is next to Livorno where you can take a ferry to arrive. We travelled around the island with our teacher and classmates and visited some geological interesting points. We will probably come back... but this remains a mystery...

Livorno, Italy Things We Did: Slept in (unintentionally) and got off of the ship pretty late Caught a shuttle into the center of Livorno Camille and I met up with Suthan and spent the afternoon with him. We went to a fresh outdoor market and bought a huge bag of fat grapes for 2€, browsed through a selection of Italian books in a corner shop, and walked around to find somewhere to sit and drink and had some gelato Suthan ...