Westysclan World Cruise 2023

Today’s port was Portoferraio on the island of Elba. We anchored off the island and travelled by tender into the port.

We started our exploring on the waterfront. It was a wonderful mixture of fishermen selling their produce directly from their boats and luxury yachts and vessels.

Then it was through Napoleon’s gate to explore the city within the 4 walls. Elba was pretty extensively bombed during WW2, so while it definitely had an old world feel to it, I think a lot of the town that now exists within the old fort walls is ‘new’ relatively speaking.

First of all we climbed up to Fort Stella.

From Fort Stella is was a downhill to Napoleon’s House. It was closed! He had 2 residences while in exile in Elba. His summer residence was open today, but it was about a 6km walk away from Portoferraio.

From Napoleon’s House it was an uphill walk to Fort Falcone. From here you could get some great views of the nearby beach and back over Portoferraio.

Of course all this walking up means that eventually you have to walk down. So we zigzagged our way back to Napoleon’s Gate.

Having explored the town within the walls we then ventured a little further afield. We walked to the beach that we could see from the fort. The water was a lovely clear blue but the beach was shoulder to shoulder people sitting on the smooth white rocks. At least you would not have to worry about getting sand in your towel!

Portoferraio had a lovely feel to it and the other towns on the island, that we could see from the ship, looked equally as lovely. Alas, time did not permit exploring any further.