Days 15-18: Off to the beach!

As the days go on it gets less interesting and I'm finding it hard to get these blogs done so I'm gonna combine some days here.  Day 15 started out with my parents and us having the villa to ourselves.  We packed up, cleaned up what needed to be cleaned up and after a quick inspection by the owner we loaded up the car and headed out to Bologna.  The day before my Dad and I heard some music coming from down the street.  Some band was filming a music video (they wanted to use our villa but we were there) so curiosity got the best of us and we drove down the dirt road to see if it was anyone famous.  It wasn't anyone we recognized...boo.  I almost got our rental car stuck in a farm field trying to turn around but I peeled us out of there taking some crop with us and maybe leaving a part or two of the car behind in trade!  Anyway, on the road!  If you are ever on the highways in Italy do not hesitate to go to the truck stops to eat.  The food is amazing! 

After a few hours we arrive in Bologna and man is it packed with traffic.  I manage to find our apartment in what looked like the slums and quickly drop off everyone becasue the street is one way, one lane and packed with parked cars on both sides.  I skid out by myself to find some sort of parking.  Holy cow, I drove around and around in an outward spiral trying to find parking and there was just no place.  I started to get 2 miles away from the apartment and headed back inward.  I found myself back to the road we were on and driving past getting ready to start the circle over when about 2 blocks down from the apartment I realized there was a lot.  I can't believe I missed in the first time!  I park and walk down to our place and Dan and my Mom are waiting outside for me.  When I walk up my Mom grabs me and hugs me and starts crying.  She was so worried about me, poor thing!  By the way, at this point I had already decided that I did NOT like Bologna.

My Dad had contacted a woman who let us into the courtyard and told him that the owner was coming to let us in.  So, we sat and waited.  An hour went by and I had texted the owner wondering where the heck she was.  Finally we called her and it turns out she was on the 3rd floor of the building, right above us, the whole time and was waiting to hear from us.  Sigh.  So she came down and let us in and gave us the tour.  The apartment was GREAT!  Once my parents were all settled in Dan and I hit the road to Viareggio.  We weren't looking forward to another few hours on the road but we had a reservation and we were looking forward to some beach time!  Driving out there was an adventure.  The highway is two narrow lanes both ways that run through the mountains so you had sheer drops and tons of tunnels to navigate.  As if that isn't enough there are a billion tractor trailers on the road too!  Fortunately they all stay in the right lane so you can get around them.  As we get close to Viareggio we started to see these little shanty towns built in the median of the highway.  A lot of them too.  It's sad to see the conditions these people are living in and amazing that the government allows them to build there.  And by build I mean use scraps of wood and metal and plastic to put up tiny little shacks.  The GPS of course leads us way off track multiple times so Dan starts to just find his way on his own and gets us into town. 

It was dark when we got there and as we were driving on the road to our hotel we went through a wooded area that had this long walkway through it that was lit up with Christmas like lights and it was so beautiful.  We made a note to go walk it one night.  More on that later.  We checked in to our hotel which was very nice and hit the streets to find some food.  Viareggio is a very cool 1930's Art Deco beach town.  On one side of it is soft, sandy beaches and on the other giant mountains loom over the town. It's lined with great shops, beautiful hotels and the typical beach restaurants.  That is to say, really crappy over priced food.  That's right people, a whole town in Italy that serves the worst food ever.  Including $13 Whoppers.  That's not the meal, that's just the burger.  Anyway, that night we did a little exploring and the next day we walked a huge length of the beach and back.  The day after we decided to spend the whole day on the beach soaking up some sun and relaxing.  Italian beaches are different from American beaches in that they are privately owned sections that have chairs and umbrellas set up along pretty much the entire length.  You have to rent space.  Fortunately we were there at the very front of the high season so we got a spot for about 25 Euros and there was nobody else around us.  Except for the street vendors selling all sorts of sunglasses and crap who came along every 10 - 15 minutes to disturb us.  These guys are a total nuisance and will not leave you alone.  You really have to ignore them or basically yell at them to fuck off if you want them to go.  If you say "no thank you" it's game on for them and they will hang around forever.

Back to the food issue, we did find one place that made a good pizza and they had an appetizer dish that we went back for another night.  It's fried dough strips with procuitto and this super soft, mild cheese that you can spread on the dough.  OMG...heaven in your mouth!  The last night we were there we ate there and then walked down to the pier at sunset.  It was a soft sunset and the air was crisp and salty.  After that we decided to have a romantic stroll down that path we saw.  The day before we walked down the long path in the afternoon just to check it out and it was a bit strange.  There were carnival rides and go karts and a little park with swans and a club that was blasting music and had old guys walking out of it in the middle of the day.  There were a lot of grandparents and parents with kids and people riding bikes.  It was nice.  So that night we get to the entrance and the lights are all lit up and beautiful and inviting.  However, there is not a soul on the path.  Huh...well, maybe it's just late.  So we start walking and I notice that there are people there alright but they are off in the dark woods.  I start to get creeped out.  A few kids come out of the woods and one of them approaches us and offers to sell us weed.  Dan makes the executive decision that it's very possible probable we will get at the very least mugged if not kidnapped or stabbed so we turn around and try to very cooly walk out as fast as possible.  This is the only night we ever felt unsafe in Italy and it's funny that it's in a very small town as opposed to some of the bigger cities.

We turned the car in while we were in Viareggio so the next travel adventure was finding the train station and buying some tickets out of Viareggio to Bologna.  We hiked it through some neighborhoods randomly picking streets to explore but knowing we were heading in the direction of the train station the whole time.  So interesting what you can find when you wander off the beaten path!  I highly suggest it...even in your home town.  We make it to the train station, buy our tickets from a kiosk and head down the main road back to the hotel.  All along the main road's sidewalks, on both sides, are orange trees!  Like every 10 feet or so and they are FULL of oranges.  It was really pretty except Dan and I noted two things 1.) there were rotten oranges falling out of the trees onto the streets and 2.) the ripe oranges were just out of reach for people to get which seems odd to me.  Beautiful though...shrug.

We met a very interesting couple during breakfast one morning at the hotel.  They had a gorgeous white german shephard with them which of course makes them approachable for me!  She was French and he was German and they both spoke English so we struck up a conversation.  Very cool customers these two!  They were in Viareggio celebrating a wedding anniversary.  He told her she could pick whatever she wanted for the anniversary and she said she wanted him to take her to Viareggio to a gas station restaurant they had been to a long ago for dinner.  He said it was some of the best food in Italy and you'd barely know it was there if you weren't looking for it.  They also told us that there was going to be an open air market the next morning all along the boardwalk (it's not really a boardwalk but I'm calling it that for a lack of a better term) and that we should definitely check it out. 

At this point I wanted to mention that in Italy (and apparently most of Europe) people bring their dogs everywhere - hotels, retail stores (even high end designer stores), in restarurants...everywhere!  I loved it!  Aside from the glaring possibile health issues.  Viareggio seemed to have the highest amount of dogs out of anywhere we'd been in Italy so far and it was really cool to see so many people spending so much time with their dogs.  The down side is that nobody in Italy seems to give a crap about fixing their dogs.  Leash laws are a bit loose too.

Anyway, we make it down to the market the next day and holy cow.  I was disappointed there wasn't any food for sale becasue I was looking forward to that but outside of that there was literally over a mile of stalls with anything else you can imagine for sale.  It seemed to be the place to buy bras which is crazy!  They were super cheap too.  We wandered the whole length and back and bought a few items.  My favorite thing we picked up was some boxer breifs for Dan that had Euros printed on them!  Hahahaa, love it.

Well, I can't think of anything else noteworthy that happened in Viareggio so at this point I'll go to the day we left.  We hopped on the train to Florence where we would pick up the fast train to Bologna.  We intentionally left a few hours between trains becasue we really wanted to spend some more time in Florence...we just LOVE that city!!!  When we got to Florence we dropped off our luggage at the bag check and strolled to a section we hadn't visited before to find a restaurant that was recommended by TripAdvisor.  When we found it we realized that a lot of travellers had used TA to find it too and there was a long line to get in.  Fortunately I didn't have my heart set on it and there was another place right next door where we had a very lovely lunch!  This was the first place in Italy that we went to that served ice in the beverages and I was over the moon!!!  After lunch we found another recommended place for gelato and on man...what an interesting place with some amazing gelato.  They had the most imaginative flavors I'd seen on the whole trip.  While we were there I noticed that there were a lot of young American kids around this area.  I don't know if they were at college in Florence or on an exchange or just visiting. 

Sadly, time to get back on the train.  I was excited to take the high speed train to Bologna!  My Dad had been talking about it the whole time and he was dying to ride one so we would be able to tell him about it.  We get all seated and the train pulls out of the station and directly into an underground tunnel.  Complete blackness out the window the entire trip.  What a rip off!!!  They have beverage and snack service in 1st Class which consisted of a Joey Tribiani look alike literally running through with a beverage cart and reluctantly stopping to slosh a luke warm beverage of your choice into a tiny cup before taking off again.  And trust me, you do NOT want to be in his way becasue he will run your ass over to get through.

We arrive in Bologna and catch a cab to the apartment to spend the rest of the trip with my parents.  I must admit that I really wish we were not in Bologna at this point. 

You can see all the pics from this leg of the trip here: http://flic.kr/ps/ZK1sF