Really Enjoying the Beach

Now that we've been in the beach town for a couple of days, we decided to actually go to the beach. The Viareggio beach is a bit more than 2 km long, ending in a port on one end and another beach town on the other. I don't think there are any beaches directly south of here.

Our hotel has an arrangement with one of the clubs across the street- there are probably about 50 of them total- who each own 100 yards or so of beach and have populated it with chairs, chaise lounges, umbrellas, a snack bar, and in the case of this one, Florindo, a swimming pool. Thanks to the hotel's arrangement it only cost us $29, instead of the $50 it would have normally cost. Oh, plus another $10 for a chaise lounge and another $10 to use the swimming pool.

If you look up and down the beach, you see a great crosshatch of color. Not only do the rows of umbrellas line up within any given club between the entrance and the beach, they also line up across the beach from club to club. Our club has solid blue umbrellas and blue chairs with orange stripes. To the north, blue and white striped umbrellas with rainbow striped chairs. To the south, orange and green umbrellas with red and yellow chairs. It's possible that this repeats at some point but I'm not sure.

I was pleased to see that the standard costume was swim shorts, not "banana hangers," as Ronnie so colorfully called them. I was not interested in banana hanging. There was also no toplessness among anyone over the age of 10 or so, but there were almost no tops for the little ones.

The beach has a graceful curve, and if you look to the north, you can see the Alps not too terribly far away. There's still a bit of snow up there in spots.

For most of the afternoon it was mostly adults on the beach and in the pool. Everyone has to wear a bathing cap, which they lent me at the office, and fretted about what was the proper way to wear it (I know, on my head!) but there were people with ears covered, uncovered, and quasicovered. When I went back to the pool around 5 it was full of little kids, and the atmosphere of the whole place was very kid-oriented for the rest of the day. THey jabber away mostly in Italian, with a smattering of other languages, but very little English and basically no American English. Most of the people in shops and restaurants speak some English, but I'm not sure to whom. There must be a contingent of Brits at some point in the summer.

Aside from the kids, the only things you hear are the sea and the various venders, hawking kites, clothing, jewelry, fake designer luggage (certainly the first thing I want to buy on the beach), fresh coconut and massages.

We did get in the sea for a few minutes. The water was a nice temperature but it was too rough to swim or even hang out easily. There are still some surfers out, even as the sun is setting at around 9PM.

We went out to dinner at around 9:30 and were surprised to see that the stores were closed. Given that it's Friday night we expected bigger crowds and more stores open, not less. We had a bit of trouble finding a place to eat because a couple of the places had "entertainment," otherwise known as middle-aged guy on a keyboard singing Sinatra songs. Actually, I can still hear it wafting up to the hotel room. We had our usual dinner here. Ronnie has seafood risotto and I have mixed grilled fish. I also had mixed bruschetta, one with mushrooms, one with eggplant and one with tomatoes and (lots of) sea salt. They were all delicious. I don't even like eggplant but I like it here. The mixed fish tonight was swordfish, two of the biggest pieces of calamari I've ever seen, a huge prawn and a langoustine. I've had this in 3 places now and it's invariably fresh, cooked simply, and delicious. The scale here says I've lost weight but I don't believe it.

As we headed back at 11:00, all the stores had reopened and were very busy. I guess they just all closed for dinner.

I really like this place. It feels good to be here. We've had amazing weather (though I'm terribly sunburned) and the air feel really great. Hopefully I'll get to rent a bike for an hour and ride up and down before we leave tomorrow.

I've also decided that I really like Italy. It took a while, but the people here are so genuinely nice that it's hard not to like it. I'm excited about going to Florence, part of the art, part because we're staying in the same place for 6 days, and part because we have an apartment there and I'll get at least a hint of what it's like living there. I've noticed that this is very important to me wherever I travel.

Viareggio