We woke up ready to embrace our only full day on Capraia Isola. We spent most of yesterday learning the layout of the two main areas of the island (the Port and the Village). Today we planned on taking some of the trails into the undeveloped areas of the island (which is most of it). Before getting started, though, we headed back to La Gelateria di Capraia for some gelato (can you think of a better breakfast than ice cream)? 😉 This time, though, I ordered the coconut flavour, and realised that’s what I’ve been missing my whole life. Not only was the flavour incredibly refreshing and tropical, but the shaved coconut added a great textural contrast with the creamy gelato.
After our morning snack, we started out walking some of the shorter trails around the island. Even being fairly close to the hotel, some of the views were outstanding.
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Two things about the island have seemed to captivate me more than anything else. First of all, there are many places where the island just comes to a cliff that drops off into the Ligurian Sea. Second of all, the colours of the sea are variegated or even banded based on depths. They range from a light almost sea foam colour to a brilliant turquoise to a deep blue that borders on navy:
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After moseying around some of the shorter, nearby trails, we walked the road behind San Nicola church to the cemetery. The cemetery was gated and locked, and we wouldn’t have gone in out of respect anyway. That being said, the view of the path back to town gave a lot of perspective regarding the distances and space on the island.
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After talking with the one of the staff members at our hotel, we realised that we didn’t have enough time to do the longer trails on the island—some of them are upwards of 8-hours in duration and quite rugged! So, we decided on a much shorter trail that would still give us an idea of the undeveloped terrain. We went on the trail behind the Village that leads to Cala della Zurletto (Zurletto beach). The trail was moderate in spots, but it did give us a better understanding of the landscapes:
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This particular trail, as I mentioned, leads to Zurletto beach. There is a fork where one can either head down many steps to the beach itself, or continue on back to the Village. We didn’t go all the way down to the beach because there were a lot of people down there. However, there was a bench at the top of the steps that overlooked the sea, and it was unbelievably serene! I could have sat on this bench and just looked and listened to the sea for hours on end. It was truly the first time on this trip that I’ve felt relaxed and at peace (hard to imagine that it took 12 days for that).
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Unfortunately, though, we had to start heading back toward town before it got dark. We walked back to the hotel, and freshened up a little bit before setting out for the evening. We bought some more wine at the local market, and then walked back down to the Port for dinner. Like I said, we enjoyed our dinner at Al Vecchio Scorfano so much last evening that we made reservations again for tonight. In fact, we liked what we ate so much that we ordered the same things again. See yesterday’s post regarding the excellent Penne con pesto and Penne with squid. This time, though, we decided to share a litre of the house white wine, and were both taken aback by how good it was for such a low price! After our lovely dinner, we took the bus back to the hotel (for the wildly expensive fee of €1 per person 😛 ). We took our wine out by the pool, and again finished the evening sipping on it and listening to the sounds of the waves crashing up against the rocks below. I wish that I had allowed for some more time here, but alas…
Cheers,
Zach
