Cavo, Elba

Elba.

Cavo is a town where one from the outside would love to live: old, small, and sunken into the crevice between the mountain and the shoreline. The residents keep food set out for the large pack of feral cats that inhabit the island, and ask for donations for them at all the restaurants. The hillside streets give way to small vineyards and delirious ocean views. Old men sit in the piazza next to the shore arguing and nudging each other when beautiful women pass by. It is timeless, almost frighteningly so, and impenetrably foreign.

We took a few trains to reach Campiglia (moving quickly through the A_ station, whose sole inhabitants seemed to be the bombed out, roofless factories and houses, stoic and crumbling reminders of harder times), then a bus to reach Piombino Marittimo. Campiglia was full of people with hard unfriendly looks, and I hope never to have to return. Once we reached the harbor, we took ferry to Elba; then once in Elba, realizing Cavo was on the other side of the (small, we thought, but actually quite massive, larger than most of the Hawaiian islands) island, we hopped on a bus to get there. Seventy minutes and a few poor judgment calls later, we reached our destination intact.

We spent the night trying to avoid our new French friend, a 70 year old year old retired professor / secret agent named Josef who stalked us during our dinner and asked us out for drinks (after we’d given him the benefit of the doubt by dubbing him a lonely old man instead of a pervy one, a mistake we realized later when he flashed his hairy chest at us and laughed that really undeniably pervy laugh), and sitting out a bench at the end of the pier with a bottle of Elba 2004 white wine and some plastic cups. Che bello.

Our second day was cloudy, so we left early and found upon returning to Piombino that a direct train to Florence would be leaving within minutes. So great timing, no buses and no transfers, but an epic, epic ride.

What is it about train rides which evokes such nostalgia? The cinematic landscape, always panning away? How easy it is to get lost in the past. When the train makes stops I am pushed back into the present, back into myself, and my only instinct is to look away. The train pushing through a Tuscan thunderstorm, rain collecting between the cars and running down the windows in thick fluid ribbons, what better environment exists in which to lose oneself? I am looking forward very much to traveling alone through the Spanish, French and Swiss country sides.