Portoferraio and Porto Venere

The two Ital­ian ports on our trip are the two lit­tle fish­ing towns of Porto­fer­raio and Porto Venere. The fact that they are both small, Ital­ian and based around the fish­ing indus­try is where the sim­i­lar­i­ties end, the two towns are quite dif­fer­ent in feel and energy.

Porto­fer­raio is a town in the ital­ian province of Livorno, on the edge of the epony­mous har­bor of the island of Elba and is the island’s largest city. Because of its ter­rain, many of its build­ings are sit­u­ated on the slopes of a tiny hill sur­rounded on three sides by the sea. In June 1814 it was handed over to Napoleon Bona­parte, as the seat of his first exile until his escape in Feb­ru­ary of 1815. Per­son­ally, we are not sure why any­one would want to escape it.

We had signed up for a wine tast­ing tour on this day, how­ever Brandi was feel­ing quite ill from the sun and exhaus­tion the days before so unfor­tu­nately we were forced to back out of the excur­sion. It was sad that we missed it how­ever it gave us the oppor­tu­nity to wan­der around Porto­fer­raio, enjoy sights and sounds of the local open air mar­ket and buy a hat for Brandi to keep the sun off her head.

Feel­ing quite burned out, we returned to the ship for lunch and ordered up some a very tasty room ser­vice of a prop­erly made cae­sar salad with anchovies and a Margherita pizza. This gave us the energy to do one last jaunt through the town on the lit­tle tourist train with a recorded com­men­tary of the town’s history.

We felt well enough to dine in the restau­rant again, and like the night before, made it an early evening – hop­ing to get our energy back for the next day, at Porto Venere.

Porto Venere is a town located on the Lig­urian coast of Italy in the province of La Spezia and is com­prised of three vil­lages of Fez­zano, La Gra­zie, and Porto Venere. In 1997 these three vil­lages and the vil­lages of Cinque Terre were des­ig­nated by UNESCO as a world her­itage site. A 12th-century Castello is only part of the local mil­i­tary past as the islands of Pal­maria, Tino, and Tinetto were all for­ti­fied dur­ing WWII as part of the axis occu­pa­tion of the region.

The town reminded us so much of the towns in Cinque Terre (very near here) with its very warm and approach­able ambiance. The build­ings are also very sim­i­lar – like colour­ful toy blocks stacked in the hills. Here, the homes along the waters edge were orig­i­nally built as defense tow­ers – seven sto­ries tall, and only three meters wide, each. The streets are nar­row and wind­ing, built to be eas­ily bar­ri­caded – through­out the town, many walls and arch­ways still stand today, despite being built in 1161.

Inter­est­ing side note on this one: since being in this region in 2008, we’ve con­sid­ered this area to be prob­a­bly the most beau­ti­ful place we’ve been in the world. When we were speak­ing to the woman at the “hos­pi­tal­ity desk”, she asked where we were from and she said “Oh! I have been there! And Banff! I think you live in the most beau­ti­ful part of the world!”.

We walked through an arch­way in an old brick wall, to find a beau­ti­ful lit­tle clear-turquoise cove sur­rounded by huge stone cliffs. There were sun­bathers on the rocks, and some swim­mers in the crys­tal clear water. This is known as Byron’s Grotto, after the Eng­lish Poet who swam across the gulf from there to visit his friend Percy Bysse Shel­ley at San Terenzo. We could have stayed here all day, but knew we had more of this lovely lit­tle town to see. We wan­dered up to the thir­teenth cen­tury church of San Pietro, which stands on a rocky tongue of land over­look­ing the sea – it was built on the site of a Roman tem­ple to Venus. From there we climbed higher still, to Saint Ambrose’s Fortress (built in the six­teenth cen­tury) where the views were also breath­tak­ing. At one lit­tle van­tage point, Brandi turned to Brian and said, “wow, it couldn’t be any more per­fect!”, but just then to prove us wrong, a but­ter­fly flit­ted by.

Once we had taken in all the views we could, we headed back down into town for some focac­cia and gelato. After that, we took a stroll along the water’s edge and a rest on a shady bench (within earshot of a very tal­ented piano & flute duo). Our last lit­tle jaunt of the day was on a lit­tle boat tour of three nearby islands – Pal­maria, Tino, and Tinetto. They are cur­rently unin­hab­ited, but are impres­sive sites of rocky cliffs and ruins of mil­i­tary for­ti­fi­ca­tions. Brian very badly wanted to take his cam­era into said ruins.

By this time, it was late after­noon and so we headed back to Seabourn Leg­end via ten­der, as it was a lit­tle too big to get right up close to the dock here. Once back on board, we decided to take a dip in the hot tub on the very front tip of the ship. We had yet another per­fect meal in the restau­rant, and you guessed it – bed time right after. We don’t really under­stand – we are cer­tainly the youngest pas­sen­gers on board, but just can’t seem to stay awake for any nightlife!