Project BIG APPLEstrudel: Vacation in Italy

I finally get around to post about our vacation in Italy (US vacation pictures still to come....).

In September we took a week off and went to the island Elba off the Tuscan coast. We had wanted to go to Sardinia, a big Italian island in the Mediterranian, but that journey did not seem right yet for us - overnight ferry, etc.

So Ben searched many hours on the internet to find us a nice apartment on the island. We went off season to avoid the traffic and the hot sun - Finn, Lilly and Ben are all blond!

We started in the middle of the night here in Austria and drove down to Piombino to take the ferry over to Elba. The kids did well and really enjoyed the ferry. From the port it was another 40 minutes ride to our apartment. It was on top of the hill at S.Andrea in Zanca. The location was very beautiful and you could have walked to the beach - without kids. But the traffic was not so bad in September and we drove to the beach every day and easily found a parking spot.

We had a great, relaxing week with lots of fun at the beach. Our days looked pretty much the same:

Get up in the morning and go to the corner store for breakfast stuff
Go to one beach in the morning and spend several hours there
Go home for lunch (pasta or bread) and take a nap
Go to another beach in the afternoon and have some gelato
Go home to shower and go for pizza
Fall into bed and sleep with the windows open

One morning we went to visit a nearby town and the port there. We found a great playground to play and had some yummy pastry for breakfast.

One afternoon we went to explore the mountain in the middle of the island. We took up a crazy cable car you had to jump in and had to stand in while going up (Lilly and I sat down).

After that we did some beer tasting at a local brewery and visited one of the hilltop towns.

But apart from that we just relaxed and enjoyed the beach. The kids played a lot and built sand castles and Ben got to go snorkeling a few times.