Isla d’Elba

All I ever knew about Elba was that Napoleon was exiled here. From Wikipedia:

”The French Emperor Napoleon was exiled to Elba, after his forced abdication following the Treaty of Fontainebleau, and conveyed to the island on HMS Undaunted by Captain Thomas Ussher; he arrived at Portoferraio on 4 May 1814.[14] He was allowed to keep a personal guard of 400 men[15] and was nominally sovereign of Elba, although the nearby sea was patrolled by the French and British navies. During the months that he stayed on the island, Napoleon carried out a series of economic and social reforms to improve the quality of life. After staying for almost ten months, he escaped to France on 26 February 1815. “

Today Elba is a wonderful little island with great beaches and lots of shops. I could spend a month here. The best thing we did today was hire Luca, the tut tut driver, from Milan. He spoke much better English than my Italian. For £10 he took us all over the island. And then recommended the best trattoria pizzeria for lunch. We had a great time, we didn’t get too hot and sweaty and we liked him so much, we tipped him £10. He was a sweet young man from, as he said, the city of models. So here are a few pics if I can get them to load.

Luca and his tut tut. At the Fort where Napoleon was exiled In 1814. He escaped 10 months later.

Napoleon and me! The movie comes out in November.

Lunch! Does it look familiar? Pizza and caprese. The pizza had artichoke, olives, ham and mushrooms! It cost £9.5. The caprese cost the same, it was missing basil.

View from the trattoria. Roscoe won’t like this picture.

Clean but wind blown hair. We’ve learned to order fizzy water everywhere we go.

The beach was lovely, but no sand, all rocks. And we saw no topless bathers except men! The wind was blowing as you can tell from my hair.

Big yachts. This one was called Endless Summer.