Tuscany and its Archipelago

Despite my many trips across much of the world and my painstaking wandering in search of the more or less well-known places of my own region, I have still not managed to complete its nearby archipelago. Much of this is due to the near impossibility of visiting Pianosa, Gorgona and Montecristo (the first two host prisons, the third is a protected marine park). I went to the island of Giglio as a child on an organised day trip of which I remember little. I have been to the island of Elba a couple of times, the first with a friend and his mother; being originally from there they had a house in Porto Azzurro, not far from the Piazzetta. We stayed about a week and it was very pleasant. I remember that one evening we went to see a film at an open-air cinema, and on another occasion we swam in a little cove reachable only on foot along a path.

From Piombino we had taken the ferry to Portoferraio and from there a bus to Porto Azzurro, crossing a hill from which the view ranged over the sea and the nearby Pianosa, which is so called precisely because it is absolutely flat. On the way back too we returned to the mainland from Portoferraio. I went back to Elba a long time later, but it was a flying visit. I was with my partner and, taking a fast hydrofoil at Viareggio, after calling at Marina di Pisa we landed at Marciana Marina, where we stayed just long enough to have lunch in a restaurant on the seafront and then headed back. I have been to Capraia twice, both times by fast ferry departing from Forte dei Marmi. During the crossing the ferry passes very close to the island of Gorgona, allowing you a view of it.

I found Capraia very beautiful: the cliffs plunging into the sea, the little harbour, the village reached on foot along a steep scenic road. Admitting that I have seen little of Elba, the island of Capraia is the corner of the Tuscan Archipelago I liked most.