Banished to Elba Island...Just kidding
Trip Start
Aug 24, 2005
1
5
10
Trip End
Ongoing
Elba Island, Italy
Friday, September 23, 2005
The Friday night before we left, I slept over at my friend Jolynn's house since I did not want to be in the house by myself, nor did I want to have to walk to the train station at 5 in the morning all by myself. We woke up at 4 AM on Saturday morning and met up with the other girls going on the trip at the station at 5 AM. The train ride took two hours and then we transferred to a ferry that took us to Elba Island. The ferry was enormous and was more similar to a cruise ship than a ferry one would take across the San Francisco Bay. There was a pizzeria, a cafeteria, a gift shop, and even a play area for children on board. Once we arrived on Elba, we all walked to our hotel "Hotel Ombrosa" Lucky for us, one of the girls who organized the trip managed to get both of our rooms with gorgeous views of the sea. We had to do some covert spy work and pretended that there were only eight of us staying in the rooms instead of eleven. We devised plans to arrive at our rooms by means of side elevators and back hallways. It was actual less exciting and intricate than it sounded but it was fun pretending to be sneaky. My room was on the third floor and had a breathtaking view of the coastline. I was lucky enough to only have to share the bed with one other person, my friend Emily. We planned on scoping out Elba's beaches and exploring the island, so once everyone had changed into their swimsuits and a spare change of clothes we headed downtown. After looking at a map of Elba, we decided it was actually much bigger than we had imagined and wanted to find better means of transportation in order to better explore the island. We were excited when we came upon a rental agency for motorized scooters and decided to rent 3 two person scooters and a tiny car called a Panda to fit the other 5 people. I was scared and exhilarated to go on my first scooter ride and I told my friend Tiana who was driving the scooter to drive safely because she was carrying such precious cargo(that would be me). Riding on the scooter, watching the scenery fly by was definitely frightening but filled me with adrenaline and was so much fun.
We decided to attempt to drive around the whole island and took the windy roads up into the hills which gave us so many stunning views of Elba. We stopped in many picturesque spots in order to take pictures and enjoy the air and the view. Unfortunately for us, especially for the scooter drivers, the weather turned colder and began to rain on us. We had to stop at a small town to give the drivers a break and to buy some coffee and hot chocolate to warm up. While waiting for the rain to dissipate, we talked, drank our coffee and shopped for souvenirs. After our long day of adventure and scooter riding, we returned to the hotel in order to get ready and have dinner. We decided to walk around the town surrounding our hotel and to find a restaurant. The person at the desk had suggested a little ristorante that was close by, but when we walked in the hostess said that we would have needed a reservation because so many people wanted to eat there. After that we ventured back into the rain with our umbrellas and sang various Disney songs to keep us warm and entertained. We finally found a little pizzeria which happily accommodated us. Although many of the dishes we tried to order were unavailable (we all really wanted lasagna), we ended up with tons of food including fried calamari, spaghetti con pomodoro, pizza capricciosa, proscuitto e mozzarella, pasta con quattro formaggi and lots of water and shared it all. After dinner we walked back to the hotel and while some of the other girls went back out to explore a nearby town, I was so tired that I fell asleep watching the Italian dubbed version of Gladiator.
Sunday morning we woke to beautiful weather and some of us sat out on our balconies enjoying the morning, sketching the coastline (these were the studio art and architecture girls), and just soaked up the sun. After checking out of our hotel, we walked with our bags along the beach taking pictures while some waded into the water. We all wanted to return home to Florence in the early evening so we decided to just see Napoleon's fortress which was on the hill near our hotel and walk around a small town on the marina. Unfortunately for us, the ticket booth for the fortress closed right as we were walking in so we just took pictures of the fortress and walked around what little we had access to. We split up for a couple hours to explore the rest of the town on our own and then reconvened to take the ferry and the train back home. After the ferry and two train changes later, we arrived back home in Florence exhausted but content and cameras full of pictures and our lungs full with Elba's fresh air.
Comments
back from buenos aires
hola ate, your mom and i get to use our limited spanish from college and we were able to get around buenos aires with my gracias and donde el bano senor. the us$ exhange was ar$2.90/USdollar. i think i ate the most steak in my entire life and i look like a muscled cow now, just the tummy. i am a bonifide red wine expert now - try the malbec and combination cabernet and malbec wines. swirl them first and smell the full body.
it was so wonderful of you ate sharing your beautiful trip to elba island and of course reading your travel log with happy tears streaming from my eyes- boy my eyes are getting misty again,let me wipe them first and blow my nose-pfffft!!. it brings back our beautiful memories back when we were still in riyadh, those beautiful eyes and smile when you were this small:).. you've come a long way ate. we watched you grow up to what you are now- a caring, happy, bubbly lady we know as ate niki. so long for now i got a patient waiting and get back to you. love ya-ciao-dad and mom