Viarregio!

The girls wanted to feel the sun on their skin today, so we headed out to the seaside town of Viareggio. A fairly harmless hour and a half train ride from Florence, we made it there with very little problem. We even gave ourselves enough time to get McDonalds...(eep, we've been very good about not being americanas up till now!). It was J's first train trip, so she was startled by the trains whizzing by SOCLOSE to each other - enough to give you a heart attack.

We arrived in Viareggio, hopped out of the train station, and headed straight towards the sea. We arrived to a soft expanse of "real sand" and dozens of brightly colored chairs and umbrellas. Now, all of us were pretty sure that payment would be required for this visit to the seaside, but for the life of us we could not find any direction on the subject. So we unanimously decided to set up shop at our preferred group of chairs until someone yelled at us. Plopping down on some blue loungers, we proceeded to make ourselves comfortable, despite the herd of noisy german adolescents behind us. (As far as I could tell, the only english words they knew consisted of four letters). Lotioned up (though really, only ginger me used the sunscreen) and stripped down to our suits, we put our feet up to relax...and then an Italian lifeguard appeared and told us that we needed to pay at a building and then he would "open the umbrella for us".

So we redressed, packed up our stuff, and walked the fifty feet to the cabana area? We bought our tickets (5 euro each - better than we were expecting) and that gave us free access to the bathrooms, changing rooms, water, and three beach chairs and umbrella. Not so bad. Basically all the beaches in Viarregio are private, and buildings like the one we visited dot every few meters up and down the beach. After we had paid for our plot of sand, the same lifeguard as before came over, took our ticket, and then sprinted back to the exact spot we were at before. And no, he did not open our umbrella for us because it was already open. So we set up shop again, and proceeded to have one of the most wonderful and relaxing afternoons. EXCEPT for the bazillions of vendors who were walking around selling stuff. All kinds of stuff: sunglasses, silver jewelry, puffy coats, books, kites, etc. That was annoying -- they would just stand there and harass you even after you told them no. We finally resorted to pretending to sleep when the vendors came by; that is until we actually fell asleep.

After that it was pretty much smooth sailing (speaking of sailing, there were so many sailboats out and I was jealous!). Kisses belle!