Category Archives: Vacations

Austria: Land of the Australians.

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While most normal people tend to go to work on a Monday, I chose to go to Austria. And by chose, I mean I was bribed with offers of beer and shnitzel into taking a road trip with my boyfriend (i’m easy like that). I had just taken the last group of the summer semester down to Amalfi so I decided to reward myself with a nice long snooze in the car while we trekked up through the border of Italy and into the Austrian Alps. Until I was awaked by this ugly scenery:

Drivin down the highway

After a few hours, we showed up in the town of Hopfgarden, about 30 minutes outside of Innsbruck. Even I had to admit the town was cute–little houses that looked like they were made out of gingerbread, brightly colored plants hanging in boxes from the windows, and people strolling down the main street. Plus, it wasn’t 400 degrees outside, so obviously I immediately took a liking to it.

Our hotel, owned by Hansel and Gretel’s great-great-grandchildren, thrice removed.

The best part about Austria? It’s full of Australians! Apparently somebody caught on to the fact that Hopfgarden is a cheaper place to ski, snowboard, hike, etc. than neighboring Salzburg or Innsbruck, so they started carting in busloads of tourist on holiday. And I thought I was getting AWAY from tourists for the day…sigh.

After we checked in to our hotel, we set off to explore the area. Which took about 90 seconds, as the entire town can pretty much be summed up by one long main road with a bunch of meaningless alleyways attached. This is in no way a bad thing, because it left us with the rest of the day to do more important things, like drink beer and watch hilarious Austrian TV from the 1890′s television set in our hotel room.

And that’s the story of that monday I went to Austria. The end.

P.S- It’s summer, people. There are no students around and I am spending my days in the office talking to weirdos trying to sell me socks and stalking people on Facebook. There will be no interesting posts until the semester starts. Fair warning.

 

 

Elba Island: Or as my boyfriend likes to call it, Lesbian Island.

By Posted in Elba, Travel, Tuscany, Vacations Tagged , , , , 4 Comments

Around early April, a group of my girlfriends and I were sitting around on our butts one Monday night, drinking copious amounts of wine and verbally abusing our European boyfriends (as you do) when someone had the brilliant idea of a girl’s weekend away to the island of Elba, just off the Tuscan coast . Now, since you’ve never met my group of friends, let me just tell you something about them–they are all very lovely, classy, and fabulous ladies. The problem is, we are all generally full of shit when it comes to making plans, and even worse when it comes to all of us getting time off from our ridiculously hectic schedules to follow through on said plans. However,  it just so happened that all of us were very determined to GET TIME OFF, since by this point in the year all of us were all in dire need of a vacation.  So with a little planning, and our powers combined…WE ARE CAPTAIN PLANET! Well, not really, but that would have been a cool start to our Elba Island getaway.

Elba is one of those hidden gems that most tourists visiting Tuscany for the first time have never even heard of.  Swarms of Italians flood the beaches of Isola d’Elba each summer, taking the 12 mile ferry ride from Piombino to arrive at their various beach houses for the month, where they will slather on the oil and work on getting so bronzato (tanned) that their miserable friends stuck in Florence will be consumed with jealousy by summer’s end.  Elba is actually quite a large island, the third largest after Sicily and Sardinia, making it the perfect place for taking an afternoon drive into the hills and getting lost on a private beach somewhere.

So we packed up K’s methane-powered beast of a car, kissed our boys goodbye, and made the 2 hour drive from Florence to the port of Piombino for our highly anticipated Elba vacation. Arriving mid-morning, we plugged in the GPS and headed off to our apartment rental to check in, and immediately hunt out some seafood for lunch.

Once fed and watered with the local fare, we set off in to explore our new home for the weekend. First stop, Capoliveri. Along the way, we found some very interesting local artwork that we couldn’t resist checking out. (SPOILER ALERT: If you don’t like profanities, stop reading this blog immediately and go back to your nunnery.)

Tu Troia…or as we say in English, you whore.

It’s good to know that Italian art didn’t die along with the Renaissance.

Anyways, after we wandered around Capoliveri a bit more, we decided to head back to our cozy little apartment and get our booze on. Luckily, our apartment was conveniently located next to a) an awesome restaurant with delicious pizzas, and b) a grocery store to stock up on snacks and vino. Saturday morning we woke up ready to head to the beach, so we hopped in the car and went off in search of a spiaggia. Luckily, those were about as hard to find as a gay man at a Madonna concert, and just as pretty!

Throughout the weekend, we beach hopped, swam in the frigid water of Capo Bianco, napped on the sand, hunted for sea glass, got drunk, took inappropriate pictures involving butts and fedoras, and ate enough food to satisfy even the pushiest Italian nonna. I’d go into more detail, but I’ve sufficiently bored myself with my words so I will just post some more pictures to do my job for me. By Sunday afternoon, the rain had started to fall and so we packed up our things and shlepped ourselves back to Florence, where I discovered that my English-born boyfriend had convinced his mate that Elba Island was, in fact, an island of lesbians, making for some really strange conversations at the bar on Sunday until I figured out what was going on.