Friday 25th April.

The Tuscan sun was shining down upon our villa today and the stone staircase amazingly didn’t freeze our feet as usual this morning! It was a perfect day to explore the beach at Viareggio, about a half hour drive North West of here.

We travelled through amazing tunnels again, and came out with the glittering Liguiran Sea shining ahead of us. On arriving in Viareggio we were startled by the Art Nouveau style of architecture seen in the grand hotels, cafes and bars lining the esplanade. The place seemed to be unnaturally busy for a week day and then we finally realized it was a public holiday (Anzac day for us), and being a bright sunny day everyone had the same idea as us! Every vehicle in sight seemed to be searching for a park and in our own search we came upon a market with a carnival atmosphere on the foreshore, down the far end of the very long esplanade. We eventually found a park and thankfully Charlotte had her scooter in the boot so we were all set to see the sites of Viareggio. The colorful market was filled with the most mouth watering temptations of cheese’s, salami’s, amazing pastries, candies, chocolates and huge selection of delectable hot dishes! At one end of the market a colorful carrousel had been turned into a bar and looked right at home serving drinks to the locals in the carnival atmosphere. Ironically this was one of the few days we had done some forward planning and had packed a picnic lunch from home, which we enjoyed sitting on the beach, watching the boat’s cruise on the clear emerald green sea.

The bambina was not content with her Spartan meal and so we had to bribe her with a bag of sweetie’s from the market, not to be left out we also sampled some of the pastries on offer, and to our surprise they looked a lot better than they tasted, I think we must have chosen badly as the vendor was doing a roaring trade with the passersby. For the rest of the afternoon we joined the rest of the in crowd and strolled up and down the esplanade. It was not like anything we had experienced before as the beach is lined by café’s, spas and Restaurants, and in the high season you must be a patron of one of these establishments to be allowed a spot on the sand, accept for three meters from the shore line the beach is privately owned by the bars etc... and, rented out to sun lovers by the towel space, we were informed that in summer space is at a premium and one must book a towel space ahead of time so as not to be disappointed and have to sit on the road. We finished our visit in Viareggio with a gelato and on the way home called in to Torre Del Lago A Puccini, this was the place where Giacamo Puccini spent most of his time with his wife after he was ostracized from Lucca from stealing another man’s wife, it didn’t seem to bother him as we know he went on to be one of Italy’s most celebrated opera composers.