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

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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.

Reason #2394823 Why I Hate Work

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The amount of time that I spend with my friends and boyfriend is about the size of a mouse’s testicles and getting smaller by the minute. Pretty soon I won’t have anyone to hang out with except twenty year olds who are trying to get free drinks from the skeezy bartenders who incessantly post ads for their drink specials on as many facebook groups as possible, and will have to resort to lurking near said watering holes hoping someone will not notice that I am not in fact a student but just a sad McSadderson looking for love in a hopeless place. (If Rihanna can find it, so can I, dammit.)

FML.

P.S.–This week will probably only get worse since a swarm of American students is set to arrive on Thursday. I had a gaggle of them in the office today taking over an hour past office closing hours to decide whether or not they wanted to travel with us or sit with their thumbs up their butts in Florence all weekend.

P.P.S–You should probably also know that I have a raging case of PMS and am probably suffering from some weird island virus that I picked up in Elba.

P.P.P.S–I will eventually stop PPSing long enough to write about my weekend vacation in Elba which was, in fact, quite hilarious and also lots of fun and giggles and involves several pictures of butts.

Amalfi Coast in May: AKA Lies from Google Weather

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It can’t possibly rain for another weekend in Amalfi. Or so I thought. What a naive little tour guide I was, to blindly accept the stats from Google weather telling me that this weekend would be sunny in Sorrento. Weather internet report of LIES!!

The weekend started out well enough. Well, after sitting for 2 hours on the side of a highway at 1:45am because our shitty little bus broke down 15 minutes from the hotel in Sorrento. After waving down not one, not two, not three but FOUR other tourist buses (who shall not be named, but suffice it to say, what goes around comes around, assholes) who refused to come back and rescue us from the side of the road and take us to our hotel in Sorrento, we FINALLY got someone to come back for us and got into the hotel at a sprightly 4:30 in the morning.  When the last of the grumbling students had stomped up to bed, me and my co-worker flopped down onto our beds and took a power nap for 2 hours before waking up to get everything ready for the ferry to Capri the next morning.

Boatin’ around the green grotto in Capri (yes, there is more than one grotto in Capri. Do your homework, people.)

After a relatively stress-free ferryride to Capri on Friday morning, we hopped on Gianluca’s boat tour to check out the island. Shout-out to LaserCapri’s boating captains for making sure we didn’t capsize or run into the rocks Titanic-style  like the boat tour from hell that we took 4 weeks ago. Another story for another time, folks.

Anyways, the sun was shining in Capri, the birds were chirping, the Italians were making inappropriate sexual innuendos to the American girls…all was right in the world. After stopping in the Blue Grotto, we headed up to the center of Capri and made our way down Via Krupp to the beach at Marina Piccola, where my favorite jewelry man Paolo lives, and so does the seafood deliciousness of La Gioa.

We said the usual hellos to the main man of La Gioa, who promptly brought us to a table with white wine chilling beside it (yes, I come here quite often. They know my order.) I made sure all the students were seated and gave my usual food recommendations before sitting my ass down to a gigantic plate of spaghetti with mussels, arugula and slivers of Parmesan cheese. Insert drool here. I’d walk back to Capri for another plate of those juicy sea-dwelling nuggets.

While I was basking in my food coma, I failed to notice that the sun was, in fact, pretty damn hot. Hot enough that by the time I got back to the hotel at 8 pm, I had received a pretty epic farmer tan on my arms and legs, not to mention a ghostly-white watch tan (which is ironic since my real watch is actually white as well. At least we match now!). I hopped my way into the shower and poured buckets of lotion onto my burns, but alas, I am now a tomato-red shadow of my former pale self.

Saturday arrived, and so did the clouds. Big, surly looking gray clouds of doom. Of course it WOULD be cloudy in Positano, making me look like an asshole for enthusiastically telling all of the students that Positano is “my absolute favorite place ever! We’re gonna swim and get tan all day long!” Insert foot in mouth here. To make up for a rather uninspiring day at the cloudy beach, I went out to the English Inn that night with a group of students, an outside bar/dance club in the center of Sorrento even though at this point I had acquired a cold that meant I was snotting big globs of mucus every 15 minutes. Sexy, I know. After 45 minutes, I had to call it a night, and my co-worker and I started the walk back up the giant hill to our hotel.

Unfortunately, us Americans stick out like polar bears in Africa. Walking up the narrow road of death that led back to our hotel, we were victims of a ruthless water-balloon bombing from some rowdy Italian boys driving by that left us looking like drowned rats, and feeling pretty sorry for ourselves. If you have any information on the whereabouts of these hooligans, please dial 1-800-AVENGE-ME-NOW.

By Sunday, the clouds turned to rain, a confusing scenario in which the sun was actually shining through a cloud cover in Pompeii, yet big fat raindrops were still falling steadily. After sending my entire group into the ruins of Pompeii, I collapsed at a table underneath a cafe owned by a rather lecherous Napolitani who is pretty much the Mayor of Pompeii, and nursed my orange juice. Exhausted, I slept on the way up to Mount Vesuvius, ate an icy smoothie thing from some crappy cafe to soothe my throat while the students hiked up the volcano, and praised the lord that the rain had stopped to reveal a beautiful sunny view of the Bay of Naples, therefore ensuring that no more bitching about the weather would continue on the bus ride back to Florence.

All in all, this was one of the more trying weekends in my young tour guiding career. A broken bus, lobster sunburn, head cold, crazy students, bizarre weather=one exhausted tour guide who couldn’t wait to jump into her bed on Sunday night and fall fast asleep.

Land of the Lederhosen: Munich Springfest 2012

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Pork knuckle & potato dumpling, pretzel with herb cheese dip, and 2 Lowenbraus. Done.

Now, I don’t know if you’ve ever been to Germany, but if you have then you are probably looking at this picture and drooling all over your keyboard. Even with my bloated beer belly after this weekend at Springfest, I could still put back a few Lowenbrau steins and a pretzel as big as my head. I might have to start shopping in the plus-sized section, but who cares. I am American, after all–and that’s why we invented Wal-Mart.

So this weekend started out much like any other. After 3 weekends in a row of getting pissed on by the thunderstorm gods in the Amalfi Coast, I begged my boss to let me go to Munich, Germany for the last weekend of Springfest, and luckily she took pity on me and let me jump on the bus for the 8 hour ride to the land of lederhosen. Best decision of my life. Why, you may ask? Let me explain something to you less-traveled folks:

MUNICH. IS. FUCKING. AWESOME.

Putting aside the obvious flaws (aka World War II), Munich is by far one of the coolest cities I’ve  been to in Europe. There are parks EVERYWHERE, with lots of trees, big wide bicycle paths, clean rivers and lakes that flow directly from glaciers, and of course a nude sunbather or two (seriously, English Garden? Nobody needs that many tanned genitals in a public space). The center of Munich is compact, i.e easily walkable for us lazy types, and we even went on a bike tour of the center–props to Frankie’s Bike Tours for taking 30 American college students on bikes around Munich and not leaving our asses in the woods somewhere–after which we  stopped in the English Garden at the Chinese Tower for a beer and some delicious German noms. I even got a little bit of culture in during the weekend by visiting Dachau, which was very humbling and eye-opening.

Riding along the Isar river during Frankie's bike tour

Now let’s get to the best part of Munich–the Springfest. Gigantic glasses of amber-colored deliciousness that give you enough strength to dance your ass off on top of the wooden tables that pack the insides of the beer tents. Thousands and thousands of people were rocking out to live-music in the Augustiner tent, screaming along to senseless German songs. Even walking through the tables, the floor was pounding with the force of everyone dancing.

By the time the tents closed at 11pm, I was sweating so much that I looked like a greasier version of Donald Trump. I then had to round up 30 drunk students and put them on a bus so we could take them back to our hotel in the middle of BFE (butt fricking Egypt). Good times. After 3 days of stupidly large drinks, I’d had enough fun in Munich to tide me over until Oktoberfest begins in September. So for now I’ll say auf wiedersen to you, Munchen. I’ll be back soon.