Italy-Day 5, 6, 7-Isola d' Elba

Portoferraio from the ferry

The steps down to our Hotel's (Hotel Paradiso's) private beach. The reviews we read acted like there were tons of steps, and it was a terrible journey. We didn't agree until the second night after some Peroni's on the beach, and it being pitch dark outside when Tiffany's knee had an unfortaunate meeting with the steps. But she managed to keep hold of her camera wrapped in a hand towel, so not too much damage done!

Hotel Paradiso's private beach

Sunset in Vitticio

Our view from the hotel on Saturday morning.

We spent Saturday in the town of Procchio-where the guy from Il Papiro in Florence had suggested we stay. We walked around kicking ourselves thinking how we should have listened and looked harder for a place to stay! It would have been so much cheaper to stay here with the bars, shops, grocery store, and two star hotel--not to mention the awesome beach and how cute it was. We ended up stealing things from breakfast at the hotel in our pockets knowing we paid so much for dinner the night before (we felt we deserved it), and buying hot beers from the Procchio grocery store for 84 cents, and batting our eyelashes for glasses of ice at the bar in the hotel to drink later that night in Vittcio as drinks were 7 euro each at the hotel. It was also a 25 euro taxi ride from Vitticio to Procchio, or a bus ride from Vitticio to Portoferraio, and another bus from Portoferrario to Procchio ending up in about 2 hours journey because the buses only ran every once in awhile. Oh well, hind sight always is 20-20.

In Procchio after some iced granitas!

Beach at Procchio

Our ferry back to Piombino-where the real "fun" would begin!

Tiffany and I were excited to go to a place we hadn't been before, as we went to so many places in Italy in 2006 with school. As it is summer, she asked around for beach ideas and came up with the Island of Elba which is a Tuscan beach island that mainly Italians (and Germans it seemed) go for vacation. When we told the men at the paper shop in Florence where we were going and how we knew nothing of the island, one of them suggested we stay in Procchio. He said for a great beach and small town, it is his favorite place on the North side of the Island. However, we weren't able to really start looking for places to stay until the night before we left around 11 p.m., and being the high season in Italian vacations, we had trouble finding places. We finally found a 3 star hotel (cheapest we could find) in Vitticio. The actual address for Vitticio was Portoferraio (where the ferry takes us), and so we thought we would have easy access to everything. Plus, the hotel had good reviews and its own beach and pool! Being 63 Euro a night, it was much more than we expected (we are used to hostel living), but went ahead and phoned them to let them know we would be on our way the next morning.

We rode the scooter down to make the 8:25 train from Castiglion to Florence, and made 2 more train changes before reaching Piombino-where the ferry takes off to Elab. Too bad the 3 guide books we looked in didn't mention that Piombino has two stops, and the second one was actually where we needed to be. Luckily, we searched our scarce train, and Tiffany was able to get this information before we got off. We caught an hour ferry ride to the island, then took the bus to Vitticio. It was about 15 minutes from Porteferrario, but not at all walkable on the winding narrow mountain roads as we had hoped.

The hotel was nice, but felt strange. For one thing, apparently Italians have a tough time with the name Tiffany, and tend to call her Steffanie. Now, she even spelled her name for the hotel twice (the man spoke English), and still when we arrived, he said, "Oh, you must be Steffanie!" Tiffany said "Yes, I'm Steffanie" (as they had now talked about 4 times and he had called her Steffanie despite her best efforts to correct him). A few other things were strange too. Like a stupid person, I had forgotten to bring my passport which all hostels/most hotels need for some reason for you to stay there. Luckily, my Texas Driver's License was fine for them (they obviously never looked because they would have noticed that their Steffanie is really Tiffany). They also made us make no down payment or anything. We simply paid the night before we left. Can't see that ever happening in America!

In addition to that, we also got the distinct feeling that we were the only Americans on the island at that time, or at least that had stayed at the hotel in awhile. Everytime we walked into a room, they knew who we were-the guy tending the bar, the waiters in the restaurant, the night shift receptionist "Oh Steffanie!". We thought maybe there were only a few people staying there, but that was not the case. and they didn't seem to know other people right away. We felt like we walked into a room and we were constantly being talked about. Sometimes they would giggle when we walked in!

More strange-while breakfast was included in our hotel cost, dinner was an extra 10 euro. We declined thinking we could do cheaper, but really, there was nothing around our hotel. So we asked instead of the 25 Euro charge for not booking it with the room (3 course meal with wine), if we could just order one course and have the price of that item. "Of course Steffanie! For you, special price!". Well I got bow-tie pasta with butter and water, and paid 14 euro, and Tiffany got spaghetti and paid the same. When Tiffany tried to order a beer, the old man waiter threw his hands up and said "Birra?!?!?! Americana and Birra!???". So she ordered the wine...

Despite the high cost and hard time getting there, the island was lovely. We had to catch a taxi to Portoferraio Thursday morning at 7:30 because the trains of course didn't start running until 9, menaing we would miss the 9:26 train from Piombino. OUr ferry ended up being ten minutes late which caused major issues for us on the train. While we and a few others ran all the way fromt he ferry to the train and made it on, we hadn't validated our tickets whch results in a fine. About 3 stops after Piombino, myself and another guy (Tiffanya nd I decided I was maybe faster), jumped off the train and ran down the platform to validate, then jumped back on. At the other stops, the train had only stopped for 20 seconds, but of course here because we rushed to get back on, it stopped for about 10 minutes making our running not necessary.

The biggest surprise came when we got to the Florence train station around 2:30 for our one station change, and noticed a sign saying there would be a ntaional train strike from 9 p.m. that night, until 9 p.m. the following night. As I flew out the next day at 4 p.m. from Pisa- a 2 1/2 hour train ride from Catsiglion, this was a MAJOR problem. It was only made worse when we foudn out the buses were included in this strike...