Italy Review Blog: Wednesday 28th April 2021

Good morning on Wednesday 28th April. Aside from the tittle tattle and comment around the Italian Prime Minister's €250 billion Recovery Plan, it's been a fairly slow news day so far and in many ways that's probably a good thing. The other major story is that the authorities have agreed to potentially extend the curfew limit to 23:00 instead of 22:00 by the middle of May. Hardly the sort of thing to set the pulses racing I know. 

Yesterday in Italy there were 10,404 new cases of Covid 19, a drop of 1,662 from the same day of the previous week. The country went through a big reopening phase at he beginning of this week and the longer those numbers remain steady, the more encouraging it will be. An important milestone was reached yesterday when half a million vaccinations were carried out in a single day for the first time; the exact number yesterday was 502,212 and in total, more than 18 million jabs have now been administered.

The current period of lacklustre weather is gradually coming to an end with some warmer temperatures occurring in the island regions of Sicily and Sardinia today with the former set to reach as high as 24° Celsius and the latter around 21° C. 

Today's photos come from the Sardinian island of Tavolara. a tiny island without a system of roads and just a short hop across by ferry from the town of Porto San Paolo. From the east coast of the Sardinian mainland you can see the unusual shape of the island which resembles a stegosaurus with the 565 metre high Monte Cannone arching from one side to the other. 

On arrival at the island following the 20 minute crossing on a little ferry, you're met with a little port area of dazzlingly blue water, a couple of restaurants and a long, narrow stretch of beach. So, nice clear water, sandy beach and restaurants equal a day out at the seaside, but there's something quite strange about Tavolara that sets it apart from other islands.

​Within its population of just twenty people, there is, would you believe, a royal family. In 1836 the King of Sardinia pronounced the island the Kingdom of Tavolara and named a humble fisherman as its new king. So it followed that Giuseppe Bertoleoni became King Giuseppe I. Let's be clear, at this stage the island had but one resident: King Giuseppe himself!

In the intervening years the population has exploded to the heady heights of today's twenty and the royal titles have been passed on through the generations. If you have lunch at the Da Tonino restaurant, one of two on the island, there's every chance you'll be served by King Tonino I, or if not him, perhaps by his sister Princess Madalena. 

Well, that's all from me today and I'll be back with some more tomorrow. 

Buona giornata.