Saturday, June 11. School’s over, and we celebrate by leaving town as fast as our legs, tires and hulls will carry us. A little less than four hours outside Milan we arrive in Piombino, but thanks to bad highway management, poorly timed road maintenance, and several lanes of autostrada reduced to one, we miss our ferry for the Island of Elba.

We’re placed on the waiting list, or rather “line,” at molo (dock) no. 2, and the time passes quickly as we watch ferries for various ports of Sardinia, Corsica and Elba ply in and out over the calm blue sea. A mere thirty minutes later, we’re driving into the belly of a “Moby” traghetto headed for Cova, a small port on the north side of Elba.

A ferry is a beautiful thing. A clean break from all that’s been weighing you down. The start of something that must surely have a whiff of adventure about it. That water you cross, it’s the great divide. Between stress and relaxation. Between life as usual and life as unusual. Water water water, oh water. Blue. Spraying. Foaming. Shifting. Carry us away! Carry us away!

FINAL NOTE: I’m going to do my best to blog daily, but the internet connection on the whole island is slow. As the woman here said, “You are truly isolated.” Isolata. From the word isola meaning “island.”