Elba Exploring Part 1

This morning we woke up to gorgeous weather and were trying to decide what to do today. I had originally planned a few hikes, but not much else in the time we had here as honestly nothing looked amazing when I was researching it. Well basically as soon as we got off the boat yesterday I was like yes! This place is amazing!! I wish we had more time here already and we just got here! So I did some more research and looked at the hike we were going to go today - Mount Capanne. I didn’t realize there was a cable car you could take up as well and when I saw what the cars looked like I was like we have to ride in this at least one way! So I looked at the price and it was almost the same for one way or round trip…so then I looked for local markets to see if there were any today and the one town had one so I was like we could either do the hike, or we can drive around and explore, go to the market, see what else we can see and then take the cable car up this afternoon. So that is what we decided to do - drive around the island explore and see what we could see. It was the best! Such a great day!!

First up we stopped at a viewpoint to see what we could see. In the second photo we are staying on the left slope of the farthest hill back. Then it was off to Marina di Campo where the market was. The market was not quite what I was expecting. Only a few product places (we did get some things that were needed there), but it was mostly textiles which was different. It was really busy with mostly what looked like locals so that was fun. We did find some Briaca cake that is common here on the island - lots of dried fruits and nuts in it and it was pretty tasty.

After the market we wandered around town some and walked along the beach, found a bakery with Schiacciata (like focaccia, but crisper and flatter) - one was slightly sweet with dried figs in, the other was plain and oh, it was amazing. Olive oil bread and salt = the best!

On the way through town we found a church and went inside to spy and I was glad we did. They had all these super modern paintings up that I loved. So this little town was a pretty good stop. Better than Grosseto was to wander around!

Then it was off to see what else we could see. There was a lot of parking at a beach (Spiaggia di Cavoli) that looked fun from the road so we decided to stop and it was really nice. We even put our feet in the water, though the water was cold and it was not quite hot enough to swim.

Then we went down the road a little ways to Spiaggia delle Piscine which we loved! It was just all huge rocks to walk on and we sat and had lunch there which was really nice. The rocks were very hot thought so after lunch it was time to move on to the next stop.Read more