Well, it definitely was a surprising day, due to my surprise illness (which I caught from Jim) and general poor planning. We drove from Montalcino to Piambino, which is a port town full of smoke stacks and other not so pretty things. We parked the car in town, debating the whole way about whether or not we should take it with us to the island (I said no. I was wrong.)and then, when we got to the ferry, I got Jim in trouble with a bathroom cleaning lady because I asked him to go in and get me some toilet paper (my nose was running and the ladies bathroom was full). Man, that cleaning lady was NOT happy about that and she chewed both of us out in Italian before throwing toilet paper at us. We should have known at that point that our trip to Isle D'Elba was going to be doomed.
The ferry--Moby Baby:
And Jim on the ferry. As we pulled away from Piombino, we watched the pollution from the smoke stacks accumulate in the air.
A side note: joining us on the ferry were several bus loads of older tourists. These tourists were from Germany or someplace like that, but we learned that Italy funds tours for their elderly. SO, throughout our trip we saw bus after bus of Italiana and other tourists. We were pretty impressed with the bus drivers, who were able to maneuver the buses around the winding roads with ease.
When we landed at Portoferraio, we realized that to get where we wanted to go, we really needed to have a car. For about a nanosecond, we considered renting a scooter, but then we came to our senses and realized that we would definitely kill ourselves if we tried to do that. SO, we took the bus. You can't tell from this picture, but the average age of the passengers on this bus was about fifteen.
The Italian kids were really polite, though, and some of them moved so that Jim and I, the old farts, could sit together. Throughout the bus ride, the teenaged girls around us gasped as we shot around the corners of the road and almost had a head on collision with another bus. Thirty minutes later, after the harrowing ride, we made it to Marciana Marina without a map and, of course, during siesta, so the tourist office wasn't open. That is when I started to cry because I didn't feel good and it was my fault that we didn't have the car. We found a restaurant with a nice waiter and I eventually cheered up.
The beaches at Marciana Marina are rocky. It's a beautiful little seaside town and after I got out of my funk, we walked down to one of the beaches. All around, Italians were sunbathing and hanging out, but no one was swimming. Except for Jim, who jumped right in to the amazement of the Italians:
I kept the camera firmly around my neck during Jim's sea romp (a tactic that unfailingly prevents my being thrown in against my will) and enjoyed the sun. It was super comfortable lying on the rocks:
After Jim's swim, we took a hike, straight up, and got a little lost because of lack of sign. We decided to back track and then ran out of water, ran out of steam, and couldn't wait to get back to the smoggy port so that we could just go home and go to bed. But the view was great!
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