I went to Elba

I am in an Italy storytelling mood. I think I'll go back to the present soon though with these posts. There were many good and beautiful things that I loved about Italy, but in November of the term I lived in Florence I decided to travel to Elba. No big deal, I traveled almost every weekend I was there. Elba is the island where Napoleon was exiled to and that's about all I knew about it. It was an awesome island in the middle of the Mediterranean, I supposed. I could probably swim and hike and stuff. There were brochures and travel guides that indicated this. It would be great. As you might anticipate however, this trip was doomed from the start.

I rode on a train, sleeping through the whole ride until I luckily woke up at my exact stop. This was disconcerting. I could have accidentally rode on to Rome or something. But I didn't; instead I boarded the last ferry to float to Elba for the next three days. The last ferry? Why? Oh, just a little weather issue. Just a minor STORM that hit only Elba and the surrounding waters. I may have used float inappropriately. We traveled vertically on giant waves until we miraculously reached Elba. Heavy rain occurred, which was not that bad I thought at first, being from Oregon. There was no way I was buying an umbrella, especially with the wind. The wind and rain situation that was occurring was rather severe.

I made it to my hotel two blocks away (thankfully I reserved a room at a hotel beforehand, since my experiences with last minute hostel reservations had not been good) and immediately was down to pretty much no dry clothes, since I was pretending to be an efficient and environmentally conscious hippie at the time and brought one outfit for the whole trip. This was a poorly planned decision. So I tried drying my clothes for about an hour, thinking (futile thoughts) that the storm would maybe cease and I could get on with the hiking and swimming. It...didn't. If anything it got worse and by about 6 p.m. everything was pitch black. Black and very wet. I needed some rain boots, since my shoes were instantly soaked and were not drying. I only had two days here, so I wanted to get going. I figured maybe I could just walk and see like one landmark or something and the next day I could do everything else. Elba is a tourist island. So there is one store that is sort of like Kmart, only much more random. I saw it on my way to the hotel. There were a few groceries but mostly random touristy things like postcards showing a dry and sunny island with cute little Italian people walking around looking at shops and going on hikes and swimming in the Mediterranean. I saw maybe three cute little Italians the whole rest of the weekend. No stores were open for the next two days, except one cafe by the ferries. But gloriously, Italian Kmart was open AND had rain boots in my size. Cool. I bought an umbrella too, just for kicks. And you know, the hope. The hope that the umbrella might prevent some water from going down my neck.

A block from the store the umbrella blew inside out and almost ripped off the handle. I tossed it in the nearest garbage can. The rain boots kept my feet dry, but as with everything on the island, came at a price. I walked around looking at the storm for a long time, telling myself how good it was that I was making the most of this adventure. I then developed chafed calves. Chafed may be a gentle adjective. My calves had a bleeding ring around them from the strangely sharp plastic tops of the boots, like the boots were trying to amputate my feet slowly. I tried stuffing my pants into the boots to pad the bloody ankles. This made the inside of the boots wet since my pants were obviously soaked. Nobody was out touring, so the next day (clad in damp tennis shoes and bloody pants) I decided I was going to get my money's worth for going to this island and I hobbled a few miles down the coast. Apparently when your calves are chafed it feels like a chain of open blisters sawing through your legs. Weird. After breaking a second umbrella I decided to just go for a swim in the Mediterranean just to say I did it. After that I pretty much just curled in a ball in the hotel and thought dry thoughts. The next day, mercifully, was when I was scheduled to depart. The first three ferries of the day were canceled, but I finally boarded one and floated (horizontally) away from Elba. Victory! Then I got to the train station and the workers were on strike...