Girls' Trip 2011

I had the distinct pleasure of spending last weekend with "The Girls" on the beautiful island of Elba. This year, The Girls included my little sister who I was so happy to welcome back to Italy for her second trip. I have now determined that it officially takes 2 trips to determine a pattern. The pattern of these girls' trips is something like this:

• Undertake a "planes, trains and automobiles" type of journey to the current destination
• Arrive at the hotel just in time for an evening cocktail
• Have every intention of checking out the island and then promptly spend most of the time either at the hotel or across the street from it
  
• Drink copious amounts of wine
• Giggle like crazy teenagers about juvenile topics, annoying everyone in the vicinity
• Have one highly memorable restaurant experience (last year = positive, this year = negative)
• Drink even more wine
• Leave the island knowing barely more about it than when we arrived
  

Allow me to expand on this year's memorable restaurant experience. On Saturday night, we decided to venture into Marina di Campo, a lovely town about 20 minutes away from our hotel by taxi. The hotel recommended a place called Kontiki and called to make us a reservation. We arrived and were shown to a lovely table in the corner of their outside dining area. It had a wonderful view of the harbor and we were initially very happy. Our server was a friendly gentleman who raved about the fresh seafood, in particular the tuna, prompting three of us to order it.

About half an hour later the food finally arrived. Now we know that when you order seared tuna, the inside will be raw. What we didn't anticipate was that the whole dish would be stone cold likely from sitting in the kitchen for 10 minutes before they brought it out. Not only was it cold, it was tasteless, as was the lemon fish dish ordered by my sister. So already we were not particularly impressed.

The next problem occurred as darkness fell. A large, bright light went on directly behind me, issuing a mating call to all the flies in Italy. Soon we were madly swatting at hundreds (or thousands?) of these little flies. They were swan-diving into the wine glasses and landing happily on the half a plate of tuna I still had left.

After several minutes of rather obvious distress, the staff moved us to a table away from the light. They did provide another bottle of wine to replace the one that the flies were now drinking. They also offered me some bread to replace about 12 euros worth of tuna that I had abandoned to the flies.

The icing on the cake was the half-hour worth of arguing that took place over the bill. When we expressed our unhappiness with both the food and the flies, our server and his wife (who may have been the managers?) vehemently denied the poor quality of the food, claimed that we did not know how an Italian kitchen should be, she told us that we were "crucifying her" and he brought out a slab of the tuna to prove how wonderful and fresh it was. All we wanted was to have some of the bill reduced due to the fact that I lost half my meal and the overpriced tuna dishes were cold and bland.

But restaurant service can be a bit of an oxymoron here in Italy, as well all know. They finally removed two of the tuna dishes from the bill, we paid and got the heck out of there.

In the end, it makes for a funny story and in no way colors my memories of another fantastic trip with The Girls, nor does it diminish my feelings about Elba, which is a lovely place.

I am already looking forward to next year's adventure. Bring It On!!

(Feel free to read our reviews of this restaurant on Trip Advisor.)