italian summering

It wouldn’t be an Italian summer without some trips to the sea. Luckily, we had the weekends off, which gave me a few opportunities to venture outside of Florence, escape the oppressively hot and sticky city heat, and explore more of this beautiful country.

I took three short and sweet trips to the coast — some more successful than others, and each memorable in its own special way.

elba island

The very first week of the program, the whole gang decided to plan a trip together for a weekend getaway. Elba Island had been on my list of potential places to visit, and by mid-week, over post-class gelato and affogato, we had pulled the trigger: train tickets booked, apartment rented. Off we go.

Getting there was…eventful. David missed the train, not because he wasn’t there on time but because he couldn’t find the right track, and it ended up taking him 10 hours to get to the island. Kai never showed, and the conspiracy theories flung about for hours until we finally heard back from him and learned he was sick (sick with the flu or sick of us, we still don’t know to this day). 

With the girls clearly in the lead, Patsy, Jo, and I made it to Piombino without a hitch — complete with an excellent breakfast stop for some of the best pastries we had all month. But then came the ferry. 

I kid you not, it was the scariest ride of my life. We got on the fast ferry from Piombino to Cavo, one of the island’s main ports which is around a 40 minute ride. But pretty much immediately, we started hitting some serious choppy water and soon the whole boat was catching air. There was a storm coming, and we were out there at the exact wrong time — this big vessel just flying full speed through the ocean, forcefully bouncing down into crashing waves every few seconds. It started out funny, but the ha-has turned to uh-ohs pretty quickly. Kids were crying, adults were screaming for the captain to slow down, those with weak stomachs (like Jo, unfortunately) were in the back vomiting into paper bags. Patsy was silently planning an exit route in her head and I was silently praying in case this was really it for me, as we all bounced up and down in our seats and held onto our arm rests for dear life.

Somehow, we made it to the island alive — me a little shaky and Jo as pale as a ghost, but able to laugh about it pretty quickly. Jo told us it was a good thing she loved her pastry in Piombino because, as she put it, “the pistachio croissant, I tasted it twice”.

We found the nearest beach club and proceeded to lounge by the water the rest of the day, David finally arrived after a very unnecessarily long day of travel, and thankfully things turned around from there. Nothing some aperitivo on the beach can’t solve.

Elba Island is beautiful, with small, charming villages and gorgeous views of the Tyrrhenian Sea. You might recognize the name because it’s the place where Napoleon was exiled to in the 1800s (can confirm, he didn’t have it too bad). It’s also known for its minerals, which sparkle and shine along its popular beaches.

Aside from the dodgy travel, we had a great 24 hours on Elba. We raided the nearest grocery store for an epic dinner spread that we enjoyed on our apartment’s big patio. We played cards all night, snacking on breadsticks and (my new favorite) cookies and laughing up a storm. We explored the small town of Rio Marina, we found a perfect cove for swimming and lounging on the rocks, and we enjoyed an idyllic lunch complete with the most delicious plate of pasta with clams and pistachios before making the long journey back to the city. A getaway worth getting away to.

cinque terre

A few weekends in I wanted to (again) escape the brutal heat, and go somewhere I could get not only an ocean breeze, but some much-needed exercise. I had been to several Cinque Terre towns before, but I don’t think they will ever get old — so I decided to go back. This time, I’d hike through a few of the towns for a different experience than I had the first time around. 

Naturally, David and I started things off with a breakfast pastry: another sfogliatella which I’d come to love so much (this one with apples inside). Then we proceeded to work off our morning treats. We started the hike in the furthest town of Monterosso al Mare, bypassing the pretty striped umbrellas lining the beach for the trail up ahead. We climbed countless stairs and looked out on crystal blue waters, the colorful village slowly becoming a speck behind us. 

Many steps later, we made it to Vernazza, one of the most picturesque towns in my opinion. We arrived extremely sweaty and ready to jump in the water, which is exactly what we did. Feeling refreshed after a dunk in the sea, we walked through town, got some calamari in a cone, and (eventually, after some directional struggles) found the next trail to Corniglia.

Another gorgeous, stair-filled hike, with more amazing scenery as constant payoff for your hard work. This leg of the trail even had a juice bar right in the middle of the mountain, with fresh-squeezed orange + lemon juice that I’m pretty sure may have saved David’s life.

We headed straight for the sea again once we reached Corniglia, and it was another hike of its own trekking all the way down to the water. After another dip, we made our final climb back up to town where we zeroed in on some cold post-hike Italian beer and a giant bowl of spaghetti allo scoglio for two (you’re probably sensing a theme here, and it’s that I absolutely must order a seafood pasta anytime I’m near water in Italy).

After meeting up with Patsy and her posse of visitors for a drink, we all hopped on the train back to Florence, eating Italian candy and playing cards to pass the time. I arrived in Florence, had gelato for dinner, and went straight to bed. A day well spent. 

genoa

I had been to Genoa on a previous trip to Italy and loved it — beautiful rocky coastline views and some of the best food I had the entire trip: amazing pesto, great pizza, fresh seafood, the works. This visit was more of a stop-over than a day trip; Kelsey had arrived in Florence a few days before my program ended, and on Saturday we planned to make our way to Nice to meet up with more of our friends for a girls’ trip.

We rented a car, stopped for one last ricotta sfogliatella in Prato, and drove the 2.5 hours to Genoa Nervi, where we grabbed a delicious lunch at my favorite seaside restaurant from my previous trip. The restaurant was still gorgeous, jutting out over the ocean with insane views, and the food was still awesome: we had trofie pesto, crispy calamari, and — you guessed it — fresh seafood pasta (this one a paccheri allo scoglio with a divine tomato-based sauce).

After a lovely lunch, the plan was to drop off the rental car and grab a direct bus from Genoa to Nice, to meet Mattie by late afternoon. That was the plan. But things went downhill fast. First, I learned that Genoa Nervi is very different from the larger city of Genoa — and I began to understand why people that knew the area were confused when I said I’d loved Genoa. Center city was a little seedy and nothing like the coastal suburby neighborhood we’d stopped in for lunch. It proved almost impossible to find the Hertz location where we needed to drop the rental car off, but after getting aggressively yelled at by a policeman for mistakenly trying to board a ferry and almost driving down a one-way street, we figured it out.

Then came the 10-minute walk from the port to the train station where we needed to catch our bus. Doesn’t sound so bad, right? But when you’re rushing to beat the clock and dragging 50 lb suitcases in 100 degree heat, a 10-minute walk is actually fairly unenjoyable. We arrived to the bus station — on time — but completely soaked in our own sweat, so much so that it looked like we’d swam there.

What wasn’t on time? Our bus. In fact, as we learned later, it was over 40 minutes late. But at the time, after 30 minutes of waiting around and being confused with all of the other people who had booked a BlaBlaCar bus ride from Genoa to Nice, we figured it just wasn’t coming. Italian transportation, am I right? 

After attempting to board a different (aka wrong) bus, we finally gave up and bought tickets across the street for a train that left in 4 minutes. We crowded on, sweaty and defeated, with no seats or space to be had for us or our gaggle of bags. Kelsey became quite despondent for the first hour or two of that ride and I thought I might lose her, but she came back to me. It was a rough second half of the day and we arrived several hours later than we wanted to, but we eventually made it to Nice — which was sure to be nice.