Check out our adventure in Giglio and Giannutri Islands and follow us in this daily cruise to discover 2 islands of rare beauty
"Ships are my arrow, the sea my bow, the world my target”- Robert Thier
The bow of Artemis shoots two arrows straight to our hearth.. read our post to discover the link between the bow and these pearls of Tuscany
Our itinerary in a nutschell
12/08/2018: Porto Santo Stefano - Giannutri - Giglio - Porto Santo Stefano
If you have more time, we suggest you to spent an additional day in to the near wild and beautiful Feniglia Nature Reserve in the Argentario. For all the details, have a look to the article dedicated to Feniglia on the blog as well as to the posts and stories dated July 2020 on our Instagram page @2intour
Getting to Giannutri
5:00 am. The alarm clock rings earlier today but we are oddly jaunty; obvious.. we are spending a whole day with our friends to visit for the first time two beautiful islands of the Tuscan Archipelago.
The first leg of today will be Giannutri, a small island of just 2.8 km length close to the Argentario coast line.
Our trip starts from Porto Santo Stefano where we board the Maregiglio boat (http://www.maregiglio.it/eng/home.htm) for a daily cruise. The journey takes approximately one hour and the boat is quite crowded, so we decide to stay in the upper deck overlooking from the bulwark the coastline. We are lucky and for the second time this year we spot some dolphins jumping off from the sea, playing with the wake among the waves.
Giannutri is the southernmost island of the Tuscan Archipelago and has a very peculiar shape, resembling a crescent moon facing east. This shape also recalls the bow and it is probably for this that the Greeks linked this island to Artemis, goddess of the hunt, calling it Artemisia indeed. Interesting info about the island and the natural park can be found at this link: http://www.islepark.it/visitare-il-parco/giannutri
At 10:30 am we arrive at Cala Spalmatoio, a small fjord surrounded by low rocks with a tiny dock. Most of the people stops here and even if it is beautiful, we decide to take the short walk to reach another cove with less tourists: Cala Maestra. This name comes from the mistral blowing from northwest, and in fact its position is in this direction. Here we spend one hour sunbathing a snorkeling around the cove.
From here we can also have a lovely view of Giglio island, our next destination!
Navigating to Giglio island
At lunch time we are back to our boat; the journey to Giglio island is approximately one hour and the crew surprise us with a supreme lunch of fish..really appreciated.
During lunch, a friend of us explain that the name of Giglio may recalls the "lily" flower, but in reality it is less romantic because it derives from the Greek Aegilium, meaning "goat island". Other lovely tales are often narrated: our favorite one tells that the island was born from one of the pearls falen by the necklace of Venere during one bath in the Tyrrenian sea.
The boat quickly arrives in Giglio Porto, a lovely village with nice shops and restaurants characterized by some colorful buildings running parallel to the coast. Disembarking from the boat we head to the famous Cannelle beach for a refreshing bath in its clear waters. Walking to the beach we glimpse a little cove with few people and a beautiful clear crystal water, so we decide to stop here for a bath and to relax.
Time flies and before you know it is already time to come back home. Unfortunately we do not have time to take a taxi-boat to discover the other beautiful beaches of the islands or to stroll around the charming Giglio Castello village. Anyway, this will be the excuse to come back again next year, may be spending a couple of nights in this awesome place.
To discover more about these islands, have a look to our posts and stories dedicated to Giglio and Giannutri Islands dated August 2018 and August 2020 on our Instagram page @2intour
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