Monte Argentario

After getting rained out in Pisa, and making our leisurely way back to Rome, we decided to overnight on Monte Argentario, in the seaside town of Porto Santo Stefano.

Not having made it to Cinque Terre, we found this little hilly town quaint, picturesque, and delightfully calm in mid-March. Arriving in the evening, we took a room at La Caletta http://www.hotelcaletta.it/. Our room was modest, but clean, and we had a spectacular view right out onto the water. We left the window cracked open (it was chilly) to listen to the waves…

Lucky for us, the sky stopped leaking right around sunset, and we were treated to beautifully reflective, gleaming wet streets in the evening. We ate in a nice restaurant on stilts over the water and, when we awoke at sunrise, the sky treated us to a magnificent display of pinks and blues, as gentle waves lapped against the shore.

The peninsula itself offers some lovely little drives that wind around interior hills, as well as trace the shoreline. We thought this was a wonderful, slightly off-the-beaten-path diversion, and we are both very glad to have decided to travel in that direction. : )

When we flew back from Malta to UK the plane followed the Italian west coast for some of the way and I remember seeing this intriguing shaped spur off the mainland. Not quite an island but not really mainland. I’d just like to go there to see if it’s as fascinating as it looks.