Elba Island Italy: The Tuscan Beach Escape Tourists Miss

After a week in Puglia and another on the Amalfi Coast, we headed to Elba Island and it ended up being one of the most unexpected highlights of the trip.

In this episode, we’re sharing what it’s really like to visit Elba, from beach hopping and hiking to the things no one warns you about, like jellyfish stings and the tiny fish that bite your feet. We stayed in Rio nell'Elba, a quieter part of the island that gave us a more local feel and easy access to some of our favorite spots.

We break down the beaches you should actually go to, including Spiaggia di Cavoli and Spiaggia di Polombaia, what to expect when you get there, and why Elba feels completely different from places like Amalfi. We also talk about visiting Napoleon's Residence, where Napoleon Bonaparte was exiled, plus some of our favorite moments from the trip, including octopus sightings, charcoal ice cream, and the spiciest pizza we’ve had in Italy.

If you’re looking for a beach destination in Italy that is less crowded, more relaxed, and still full of incredible scenery, Elba might be exactly what you’re looking for.

We’ll also be sharing a full Elba beach guide on the site this week.

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:00

Hello and welcome back. I'm Lisa. And I'm Erin. And this is a Getaways Podcast.

SPEAKER_01 0:07

We booked our summer vacation.

SPEAKER_02 0:09

Well, part of it.

SPEAKER_01 0:10

Most of it. Uh half of it. Some of it.

SPEAKER_02 0:14

But hit in Croatia again, hopefully. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 0:17

So when this airs tomorrow, it's King's Day. It's King's Day.

SPEAKER_02 0:21

So we will do a little video so you guys can kind of see what it's like here. But if you haven't experienced it, it's it's one of like you know, it's like there if say there's 20 things in the in the world that like everybody should see. King's Day should be on that list.

SPEAKER_01 0:38

Yes. Yeah, and I didn't know about it until we moved here.

SPEAKER_02 0:41

No, I know, and we found out about it by accident because we scheduled a trip when it happened to be King's Day.

SPEAKER_01 0:46

Oh yeah. No, that's true. So King's Day. Have we done an episode about King's Day?

SPEAKER_02 0:51

I don't know. We talked about it. Yeah, you like King's Day too.

SPEAKER_01 0:55

We should do that. Okay. That's not gonna work. I know. I understand. We should do an episode, record one to go up next year.

SPEAKER_02 1:07

For King's Day?

SPEAKER_01 1:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:09

Yeah. But basically, the you know, it's the whole country celebrates. Everybody wears orange, everybody, there's just street parties and sales and food and drink and music everywhere.

SPEAKER_01 1:21

I mean, it's just And Amsterdam is wild. Amsterdam is wild. Amsterdam is like it's like standing in line at Disneyland on every street.

SPEAKER_02 1:30

Yeah. And what's funny is the canals are packed, are just as packed as the sidewalks. So if you're in a canal or in a boat on a canal, like you're parked, basically, and you can't get out until everyone around you does.

SPEAKER_01 1:42

Yeah. All right, so we'll do a whole episode, but it's good.

SPEAKER_02 1:45

But happy King's Day, everybody.

SPEAKER_01 1:46

Yep. Well, today we're gonna do one beach place that we have never talked about before.

SPEAKER_02 1:52

Yeah, and that's Elba Island, which is a very small little island off the coast of Tuscany, that 45-minute ferry ride, right?

SPEAKER_01 2:01

Yeah, it's a Tuscan island. And we found out about it through one of your friends in wine school.

SPEAKER_02 2:07

Rocky, yeah. But and then we have I met other people who have houses there and stuff, so we got a little bit more inside information from them. But it's it's a really special place with kind of a strange history, and we'll get into all of that. But but in terms of the beaches, it's it's one of the most diverse places I've ever been in terms of beaches, because you could go one place and then go a hundred meters down and you're in a completely different air like feel, you know, and there's like 128 beaches.

SPEAKER_01 2:41

Yeah, and the island is small enough where you could you could drive from in like you could go from your one end of the island to a beach on the other end of the island, spend a couple hours and get home before dinner. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like it is a small island, it is an island that at least when we've been there, tourists don't know about. It's all Italians.

SPEAKER_02 3:00

Yeah, yeah. No, it's definitely not like that kind of tourist trap. It's not an international destination. And which is great. Which is great because it can't afford I mean, it doesn't have the real estate for a huge population of visitors, but it is worth seeing, so it's kind of hard, you know.

SPEAKER_01 3:19

People do ferry in for the day and then ferry out.

SPEAKER_02 3:22

Yeah, but it's but you would want a car or I guess at least a bike so that you could kind of get around and explore better.

SPEAKER_01 3:27

Because there's not put like there's not like there is there are buses. There might be, but to get from like one of the ferry stops to the other to the south side of the island would be quite a bus ride.

SPEAKER_02 3:36

Right.

SPEAKER_01 3:36

And that's really not how you want to spend your day if you're ferrying.

SPEAKER_02 3:39

Right.

SPEAKER_01 3:39

But yes, you need a car.

SPEAKER_02 3:41

Yeah. So we were there for a week.

SPEAKER_01 3:45

Yeah, so well, we were very ambitious when we our first couple years when we got here. So it was 2018. We had been living in Florence for a year, and my niece came and we drove down to Puglia, and then we spent a week in Puglia with my niece, kinda, and then we spent a week in the Amalfi coast with my brother, and then we dropped my brother off in Naples, and then we drove to Elba, stopping in Umbria on the way. I mean, what kind of vacation were we like what life were we living? Let's round her up and do it again. And then when we left, we decided we weren't done vacationing and we went to Aqua Dome for our first time.

SPEAKER_02 4:20

Oh, is that there, not Switzerland? I thought, because we went to Zion one time.

SPEAKER_01 4:24

I think maybe we hit Zion on the way to Aqua Dome, but I was looking through my Instagram post from when we went, and as a picture of us, a video of us leaving Elban. It says, bye Elba. Next stop, Aquaterme, Aqua Dome Terme. What a great summer.

SPEAKER_02 4:41

If anybody would like to finance another summer like that, we are available at thegetaways.com. Okay, so we did we take the car on the boat? We had to have, yeah. Okay, so we got on the ferry in Lavorno, and then we and we had cash then. So he came on the boat. We parked the car, we sat up. It was just like like theater seating basically in the boat, uh, but easy 45 minutes on and we're done.

SPEAKER_01 5:07

And then it was our first time on a ferry, and it really gave me some false sense of security.

SPEAKER_02 5:12

Yeah, because it was super easy. Drove right on, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 5:15

Drove right off, no drama.

SPEAKER_02 5:16

Yeah, and it wasn't like a signed seating or anything, but we just had an easy time finding a place to sit. And it was very simple. And you know, I think we've mentioned before, but but Cash could sometimes not be a very easy dog. And he just sat there and like there was no there was enough room for everybody.

SPEAKER_01 5:35

There wasn't any like we definitely got on in time to to secure an aisle in the corner or a a row in the corner where he could kind of be smashed in so he didn't really have to encounter other people. Yeah, but I mean it was a pit bull.

SPEAKER_02 5:46

Well, but I mean, like on some of those, it gets just gets so crowded and loud and chaotic, you know, but it was all good.

SPEAKER_01 5:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 5:54

Okay, so we got there, and wait, where do we stay?

SPEAKER_01 5:56

Rio We stayed in Rio Delba Elba.

SPEAKER_02 6:00

And we had a cute little Airbnb up in the hills. Up in the hills, yeah. But this little village that had everything you needed and was very, very cute, and even had a circus one night when we were there. We have talked about the circus before, I think. We have, yes. But a tiny little like, I mean, the quintessential neighborhood circus. Like a circus came to town and everybody set up chairs and went out and watched it one night. Like it was kind of cool and crazy all at the same time.

SPEAKER_01 6:25

And our our Airbnb was it was a decent size. Parking was a little not in the village. There was no cars in the village, and we weren't near beaches.

SPEAKER_02 6:35

No, but what we were near was great hiking.

SPEAKER_01 6:38

Great hiking.

SPEAKER_02 6:39

We right up above, like further into the hills, there was just tons of trails. I took cash up there every day, and then we were actually there for my birthday, and we went on a huge hike that day.

SPEAKER_01 6:50

But yeah, we did all the way up to like a castle.

SPEAKER_02 6:52

Yeah, yeah. But really, really nice and amazing views from up there, too. You could see because you're surrounded, you're on an island, so you're surrounded by the sea, and it's just beautiful.

SPEAKER_01 7:01

Yeah, it was great. I will say that there was some cat next door.

SPEAKER_02 7:07

Oh god.

SPEAKER_01 7:09

There was this cat that lived right next door. It was a sick cat. We would think it might have expired before we left.

SPEAKER_02 7:15

I'm sure you're all very fascinated by that story.

SPEAKER_01 7:20

Okay, so that's where we stayed. There's there was cute restaurants in the town. Right outside of the town, there's a place called La Bruschetta. And it I had the spiciest pizza I've ever had in my life there.

SPEAKER_02 7:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 7:33

The spice and Italians don't like spice like I am like I like spice.

SPEAKER_02 7:37

Well, yeah, because you they said they're like, it's spicy, and you're like, oh, I can handle it. And then 10 minutes later, here she is, like crying and sweating.

SPEAKER_01 7:43

And I ate it all because I'm not a quitter. But it was so flipping spicy. Like the only time I've had something as spicy was in Matera.

SPEAKER_02 7:54

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 7:54

Which we'll get to that on another episode. But it was so spicy. So if you like spice, you guys enjoyed your pizzas then, too. Yeah, no, and we ate there several times. So La Bruschetta, if you want to go have a good pizza, it's in the middle of the island, it's really nice. It's not near a sea.

SPEAKER_02 8:11

So let's go back to beaches. Beaches. So, like I said, you could go. So where we were, you had to go down to this the closest sea was like connected to a resort kind of thing. Yeah. But I mean, you could literally like you'd be driving along the coast and there'll just be cars parked on the side, and you can just park and like walk down and see what you see. I mean, it's not, it's it's a much more rustic, less polished, less structured island than a lot of the beaches in Italy.

SPEAKER_01 8:51

Yes. I I have a list somewhere. So by Wednesday, I will post the beaches we went to because we went to probably 15 or 16 beaches.

SPEAKER_02 9:01

I was gonna say close to 20. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 9:02

We went to so I've got a list. Well, I've got the list that we went off of and I I know which ones went to. So I will I will put up a post probably by Wednesday of all the beaches we went to with a little description because they were all different. A lot of them were wild beaches, like wild, yeah, but not empty. Like everybody knew, like people knew. Like there was some we had to hike through a forest to get to one that was not wild, but you had to park up high and hike down to it. Yeah. So I'll I'll give a list. I just put on here, I have a couple of our favorites that we can talk about. Okay. But but yeah, it's it's a lot. So if you're going to Elba, check out our list because I mean the beaches are amazing.

SPEAKER_02 9:44

Amazing. And you have to be, like Aaron said, you have to be prepared to like make your way to a lot of them. It's not just like wear flip-flops and hang out. Like sometimes you're you're doing a real hike before and after you're there. All right, let's talk about our favorites then.

SPEAKER_01 9:58

Okay, so the spiaggia di Cavoli, it is the first beach where we encountered the fish that bite you. Oh, the the fish feet. Feet feet fish, yeah. I don't know. I don't do they have those in America. I don't know. Okay, so we discovered this spa in Florence, right down the street from our apartment, where you stick your feet in a tank and these fish eat all the dead skin off of it. It sounds disgusting. It is disgusting, but it was something we were like, oh, what is that? And so we did it.

SPEAKER_02 10:25

It was kind of correction. You did it. Oh, you didn't do it? God no.

SPEAKER_01 10:30

So I I didn't realize that those actually come from the sea. So we're in Elba. Like, we didn't have that problem in the Amalfi Coast the year before. Or when we were down south, it must be a northern thing. Yeah, I don't know.

SPEAKER_02 10:43

I think we've had it everywhere.

SPEAKER_01 10:45

So we're at this beach, and we're I like to lounge in the shallow area, and Lisa swims. So Lisa's pretty safe most of the time because if you're moving, they don't get you. But I'm standing there and like the fish swarmed and they were biting my legs and my feet, and Dylan hated it. I didn't mean it tickles me a little bit, but it's just be prepared. I mean, it's not like teeth bites, but they get there and they the It's like in a little nibble. Yeah, yeah. So be aware of that.

SPEAKER_02 11:12

But but the the water is warm, the water is incredibly clear. I mean, you can watch them come up to you.

SPEAKER_01 11:18

Like it's and a lot of the beaches were pebbles. Yeah, there are sand beaches, but most most of the beaches are pebbles or rocks. Right. Another beach we really liked was the one I talked about where you park up high and you have to walk down to it, and it's spiagged pulumba. Scott Bayo. Bayo, bao, ba, baeo.

SPEAKER_02 11:38

Really using Scott Bayo is a guideline for pronunciation?

SPEAKER_01 11:42

Because his name is B-A-I-O. It's Bayo. So this is Pulum Bay uh Bea. No, I don't support.

SPEAKER_02 11:51

Ladies and gentlemen, I don't think that I ever thought that Chachi would come up in a podcast. But there you have it. Mark this day on your calendar.

SPEAKER_01 11:59

But that one you have to walk down to, it was fairly crowded. Parking was hard. Yeah. Parking, you get because most of these places don't have parking lots and it's just people park on the street, sometimes you just don't get to go to a beach if it's crowded because there's nowhere to park.

SPEAKER_02 12:14

Yeah, you also have to just go being patient and being flexible. Yeah. You know, I mean, the the reality is that you're not going to go to a beach that's bad.

SPEAKER_00 12:22

Nowhere.

SPEAKER_02 12:23

It doesn't happen. So if it's if your plan wants to go somewhere and you need to park a little bit further than you're wanting to walk, like just go there. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 12:31

Because even our local beach wasn't the greatest beach, but it was fantastic.

SPEAKER_02 12:34

Yeah, yeah. Under under a normal scope, it would be like, oh, this is a dream. You know?

SPEAKER_01 12:41

So you hike down to it. It's more bigger pebbles and rocks.

SPEAKER_02 12:46

More bigger.

SPEAKER_01 12:46

Huh?

SPEAKER_02 12:47

More bigger.

SPEAKER_01 12:48

More bigger. I'm an English major. And I stayed very shallow in that one. But Lisa went swimming, and Lisa went out and saw found an octopus.

SPEAKER_02 12:58

Octopus, yeah. Well, that was the one with the little island right off, too, right? Yeah. Or the little big the big rock, right? Yeah. And so Dylan went out there with me.

SPEAKER_00 13:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 13:06

And and there was so you swim out for a bit and then it gets shallow again, and then there's just rocks everywhere. And I mean, there was like sea life out there. You know, and it's still not the tropical, like bright colored fish and stuff, but it was really cool. And you know, people were seeing all kinds of things, and there's crabs and there's octopus. Like, I mean, really, really cool.

SPEAKER_01 13:26

So those are our two like standout, standout beaches from our trip, but there are so many more. And like I said, I'll put something up, so keep an eye out for that. We also did a boat.

SPEAKER_02 13:36

Which was amazing.

SPEAKER_01 13:37

To a shipwreck.

SPEAKER_02 13:38

Yeah. Which was amazing. I mean, any of these places that we talk about on the sea, you should always get a boat because it's not like, you know, I grew up in California. It's not like getting a boat in California where there's waves and you've got to deal with all that. I mean, this is like clear flat water. So you can go out, you can go snorkeling. I don't scuba dive, but of course you can at a lot of these places. You can also just like swim around sometimes, oftentimes there's like caves or, you know, certain things to explore. You can jump off the boat, like you can get a boat that has that serves you food or a Pere Tivo, or you know, I mean, it's it's a very common thing, and it's not the expense that you would expect. I mean, I don't think we've ever been on like a group one that's more than like 30 or 40 a person.

SPEAKER_01 14:28

And even like our privates have never been more than a couple hundred dollars. Yeah. But this was a group one.

SPEAKER_02 14:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 14:33

It was like a double decker. We went to we went to a cove that we were supposed to swim in, but was full of jellyfish, remember? Full of jellyfish. We couldn't see the bottom because it was just covered.

SPEAKER_02 14:44

And they were big.

SPEAKER_01 14:45

Big, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 14:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 14:46

And then we went to a shipwreck, and I think you and Dylan went down. And then we went to another cove.

SPEAKER_02 14:53

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_01 14:54

And Dylan, Dylan loved, he was 12 when we were there, and he loved jumping off the top of the boat. And he, but you know, he wore a life jacket. But we went to another cove and he was down in the water and he got stung by a jellyfish.

SPEAKER_02 15:06

Yeah. We were coming back up and we were like, oh, what is that? Because it was like a reddish color. Yeah. And it wasn't anything that it didn't look like a jellyfish to me, but it definitely he had immediate impact. Yeah. So yeah, that was our first. But I have to say, you're the only one now that hasn't been stung.

SPEAKER_01 15:23

Correct. And I'd like to keep it that way. Well, but it's it's Lisa got one that snuck in her bra. I mean in her bathing suit last summer. Just snuck right in there.

SPEAKER_02 15:33

Well, there was very little else in there. So we decided to make a home. But no, but I was gonna say, like, in my head, I always thought I I'm gonna flip out if one comes near me. I don't want anything to do with it. And I hope it doesn't ruin my water experience because we all know how much I love to be in the water. But I thought that that would be something that I would be really upset by. And I mean, you know, I was like, ooh, yeah, something got me. Yeah. But I mean, it's not is not that big of a deal.

SPEAKER_01 16:02

Well, and Dylan, when he was younger, was the king of panic. Yeah. Because he got that from me. But he was calm. Yeah. The guy, the captain of the boat put some cream on it, said, Oh no, it was just a floating tomato or something. It wasn't a jelly, it was a jellyfish.

SPEAKER_02 16:14

Well, I think that he didn't want people to pull what I thought I was gonna do and get all panicked and not want to go on the water, but it was kind of ridiculous. We're like, oh, that that killer killer tomato.

SPEAKER_01 16:25

Somebody threw it out of their sandwich, got mad. But jellyfish are all over the Mediterranean. They're common. And I'll do, I'll put on my mask and I'll go just kind of do a perimeter every once in a while because they're not fish, they don't swim at you, like they float and they're they're dictated by the tide. So they're easy to as long as not so many that you just can't, they're easy to avoid and you they're easy to spot for the most part.

SPEAKER_02 16:50

Yeah, and like I said, if it does actually get you. It's not terrible. It's not terrible, you know?

SPEAKER_01 16:55

It's not you don't have to pee on yourself.

SPEAKER_02 16:57

Yeah, you don't well, that would be really hard. Yeah, I know it would have been really hard for me.

SPEAKER_01 17:02

Somebody else would have had to I had would have had to be a trickster. Like, didn't Chandler pee on Monica?

unknown 17:08

I don't know.

SPEAKER_01 17:10

Something like that.

SPEAKER_02 17:11

My nephew got stung a long time ago, and I think his was bad, but I think he was in Mexico when it happened.

SPEAKER_01 17:16

Did he pee on it?

SPEAKER_02 17:17

I don't know. These are things I don't want to know.

SPEAKER_01 17:19

But anyway, so do you know what else we did in Elba other than beaches? Oh, when we got back from that boat tour, we had Dylan had charcoal ice cream.

SPEAKER_02 17:30

Yeah, what was the name of that town? Do you remember?

SPEAKER_01 17:31

It's where Capolavera Capola Veria.

SPEAKER_02 17:34

Because that's where we had my birthday dinner too, which was fantastic.

SPEAKER_01 17:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 17:37

Like some of the best seafood I've ever had.

SPEAKER_01 17:39

And I think that's where most of the like boat tours come out, go out of. I mean, probably in Porto Viera, too. Right. But Capola Viera, I think is what it's called.

SPEAKER_02 17:49

Huge marina.

SPEAKER_01 17:50

Huge. And and they had this gelato shop that had black ice cream. We're like, what that? What that?

unknown 17:55

What that?

SPEAKER_01 17:56

Sometimes I'm pretty sure I didn't say what that. Sometimes words come out of my mouth before my thought process finishes. So Dylan got the black charcoal ice cream. He said it tasted good. His mouth was black for hours for hours.

SPEAKER_02 18:16

And that was not an attractive thing.

SPEAKER_01 18:18

So if you're there with a date or something, don't get the black ice cream. Oh goodness.

SPEAKER_02 18:26

Or if you want to get rid of a date. Maybe you do want to go get charcoal.

SPEAKER_01 18:30

So another thing we did was we went to there was this in Port like in Porto Azorro, I think, which is where we came in and out of from the boat. Or came left from Puerto Zoro.

SPEAKER_02 18:42

Yeah, we came in from the other one.

SPEAKER_01 18:44

So we went, they have mines there for like quartz and what are minerals. And so they have a a tour that takes you into the mine, you get to look at rocks, you get to crack rocks open and get to keep what uh keep your bounty.

SPEAKER_02 18:58

Yeah. Like you go in in the Jeep, like it's it's total rustic, like we're going on a you know, safari to go mine some minerals and see what we can find in the rocks and be archaeologists.

SPEAKER_01 19:08

Yeah, and they're like you can keep whatever you find, and because technically they probably mined where they took us, they've mined the shit up. They've mined mined it all out.

SPEAKER_02 19:18

Oh yeah. And I mean, how many tours do you think a day go? Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 19:21

So you're finding like little whatever they're called inside rocks. What are those things called?

SPEAKER_02 19:26

Crystallization, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 19:28

Shiny bits. Shine Dylan found a winner. Like big shiny bit. It was beautiful. And the tour guy goes, Oh, let me see that. And Dylan handed to him, and then he wouldn't give it back to Dylan. Yeah, he put it in his pocket. Stole it. He stole it. And Dylan, who is now six years later, almost seven years later, has not forgotten.

SPEAKER_02 19:47

Oh, he was mad. I mean, rightfully so, but he was mad.

SPEAKER_01 19:51

Mad because they sold them at the shop when you got back for like hundreds of dollars. Yeah. So, but yeah, no, Dylan, he still gets angry about it if you ask him. And that's all he remembers about Elba Island.

SPEAKER_02 20:01

And it's unfortunate because it was kind of a cool experience.

SPEAKER_01 20:04

If that guy was, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 20:06

And I'm sure he was told to do that by the company, but it was messed up. I mean, there's there's no reason that don't do it to little kids. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 20:13

That's rude. But that town's super cute. They've got super cute beaches, like family breaches.

SPEAKER_02 20:19

And I would recommend that that experience. Yeah. You just don't show them what you find.

SPEAKER_01 20:25

Yeah. If you find something good, just put it in your pocket. Put it in your pocket, cold. Tell your parents later. But yeah, the town was so cute, we changed our departure from Porto Ferra, whatever, to Porto Azora. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 20:36

Because it was easy. It was easy. It was easy, yeah. But yeah, no, I I thought that that it was a fun experience. It was just he ruined it.

SPEAKER_01 20:43

Oh, ruined.

SPEAKER_02 20:44

All right. So one more thing to know about Alba. Tell me. Besides just having great food, and pretty much you can't go wrong anywhere you eat there because it's all fantastic. Mr. Napoleon Bonaparte.

SPEAKER_01 20:55

Oh, big old Napoleon.

SPEAKER_02 20:56

He was exiled there in 1814.

SPEAKER_01 20:59

I mean, that's what they thought the punishment for him should be. I know. Go to this really beautiful island in Italy with amazing food.

SPEAKER_02 21:05

Extraordinary castle.

SPEAKER_01 21:08

So nice.

SPEAKER_02 21:09

Yeah. So you can tour the castle. We did. Which we did.

SPEAKER_01 21:12

Like for$3.

SPEAKER_02 21:13

And the gardens, which were really lovely too. So yeah, so you could spend like a couple hours there, probably. And then the town right below it is great too. We had a really nice lunch there. We did.

SPEAKER_01 21:25

Now what I did learn is Napoleon, he created all the roads and everything. He made it a easy to get from all points of the island. So I guess he was a good guy. He was a good guy for Elba. For Elba. He only spent 10 months there though. Yeah. He was like, get me back to France. I miss the butter.

SPEAKER_02 21:42

But he really did do quite a bit according to the history that Elba teaches you there that he was helpful in the infrastructure and and some of the social services, too. Like it was, you know, he he He did sort of I mean, I guess if he had to be there for a while, he was gonna try and make it the best that he could. But but yeah, not to say that that redeems him or or makes him a lovely person.

SPEAKER_01 22:12

Correct. And it's right above Portaferia, which is where we went for lunch. It's a big town for a small island. Yeah. It's where we would take the port in. There's a nice marina area with lots of great restaurants. I definitely would say if you wanted that's a if you wanted to stay in more of a bigger town vibe, that's where I would stay.

SPEAKER_02 22:32

Yeah. It is, it's really cute. And and I would go see the castle. I mean, it's an interesting walk around. Yeah. I mean, it's it's it's a nice place, and it's also just nice to do something different when you're beach beach beaching it and you know, doing all of that to go somewhere a little bit more historic. It's kind of interesting.

SPEAKER_01 22:50

I think the moral of this whole story is I want to freaking go back.

SPEAKER_02 22:53

No, I know. So here's the thing. If you want polished, you want easy, you want you know, to go to the same beach every day and get your lounge chair and all of that. Elba's not the place for you. If you want to do the rugged, more sort of adventurous, more sort of, I'm gonna find my perfect beach, and you know, you're you're down for whatever that means, whether you know it's it's just the parking or the hiking or the whatever, then Elba is your place because it's it really is it's amazing, but it's not for somebody who just wants to like sit in a lounge chair.

SPEAKER_01 23:34

Yeah, yes. I feel like, especially if you're coming over from America for a week vacation, right? You it might not be the place.

SPEAKER_02 23:44

It's an active vacation. Yeah, you know what I mean? Like you have to seek out what you want to do. Like it things are not just like automatically at your fingertips. I mean, there's essentially one road that goes across the whole island. So it's not like it's a you know, it's not like it's l far or long, but it's not you can't just go to A to B.

SPEAKER_01 24:01

Yeah. I I think if you want a vacation like an Italian, go to Elba Island. If you want a vacation like a vacation, go to the Amafra Coast.

SPEAKER_02 24:09

Right. Or Sardinia, or you know, there's there's the million other places in Italy that are a little bit more yes, without the rough edges structured.

SPEAKER_01 24:19

But if you if you have done those or that's not your your bag, I mean Elba is so f amazing.

SPEAKER_02 24:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 24:27

And so undiscovered.

SPEAKER_02 24:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 24:30

That it's just I I want to go back.

SPEAKER_02 24:33

And just, I mean, I think the thing that I love most about it is the variety.

SPEAKER_00 24:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 24:38

Is is being able to you can feel like you go to a different island every day.

SPEAKER_00 24:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 24:42

You know, if you drive around and go to a different beach. Like it's really, it's really special like that for me and very, very nature heavy.

SPEAKER_00 24:48

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 24:49

You know, a lot more nature heavy with the hiking and all of that than you know, some of the other Italian coastal regions.

SPEAKER_01 24:57

I agree.

SPEAKER_02 24:57

Do it, go to Elba.

SPEAKER_01 24:59

I agree. I mean, we looked there this summer.

SPEAKER_02 25:02

Yeah. Well, there's not a whole lot. I mean, I guess we should say that too. Oh, yeah. There's not a whole lot of places to stay because, like we said, it's not a huge tourist destination. Plan ahead. So plan ahead and be flexible because there Airbnbs are very limited. Hotels there's probably more of.

SPEAKER_01 25:17

Yeah, but limited still.

SPEAKER_02 25:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 25:20

Yeah. So there you go. All right. We hope you have a good week ahead, and we'll see you next Monday. And thanks for listening. Check out the website www.thetawayswithaze.com, and I will definitely get that beach post up sometime this week.

SPEAKER_02 25:36

And we will tell you all about Kinsley.