Italy beaches
I'm way overdue, but a backlogged entry finishing our Italy trip:
Italy, Days 4-8 (Aug 25-30). Tellaro/Fiascherino/Lerici. We began our beachside segment of our vacation by arriving in Fiascherino. Our hotel listed the address as Tellaro, but considering it's only a few feet after the sign delimiting the beginning of Fiascherino, I think that's likely not correct. The hotel has gorgeous views of the cove (Fiascherino Bay) from nearly every room, which greatly made up for the miniscule bathroom where you fall out of the tiny shower stall onto the toilet and bidet (why, oh why did they think this bathroom had room for a bidet?). Our room also had the misfortune of being just out of reach of the wifi, so we had to go out into the hallway to check our email. But over all, I'd have to give the hotel a positive rating because it was practically on top of the beach and the staff were excessively friendly: free bandaids, a free beach towel, and really reasonably priced drinks at the bar.
We had two choices for beaches -- one whose descent down the cliffside was 30m to the left down the road from the hotel, the other whose descent was 15m to the right. The first day we decided to go to the beach on the left, which was crowded and without good places to lay down your towel. Dan and Glor were not happy, since it seemed much rougher going than the beaches they had been to before. Luckily, the next day we tried the beach to the right and it was significantly more pleasant, with rental chairs for Dan and Glor and a sandy/lightly pebbly stretch of free beach for me and Christian. This beach was its own little cove, where the water was clean and dropped off rather quickly, so that you were quickly over your head.
Even though the beach is not pebbly, but coarsely sandy, which is unusual for the Mediterranean, it still has the typical Mediterranean rocks scattered around in the water. These are sharp, lava rocks on which you can cut and scrape your feet, and indeed Christian sliced open his big toe on last day. At least it was the last day, so he didn't have his beach time or sightseeing cut short.
The coastline's so beautiful in Southern France and Western Italy, but now that we've experienced it twice, I'd say that I much prefer the smooth sandy beaches of NJ. Now, in terms of eye candy and how much of it is "wrapped", that's another story. ;-) Our beach was crowded, but with the exception of us and a German family or two, it seemed to mostly be Italians on our beach. We'd arrive early in the morning and then leave around 11 or 12 when it started getting really crowded. We'd usually come back late in the afternoon again, after people had started leaving. This way we still got our swimming in, but avoided the crowds -- a major convenience of having you hotel on the beach.
On Saturday, our last full day, we intended to go down to the beach at 9am, rent lounge chairs and spend the whole day there. We arrived early in the morning only to find that the rain clouds that had swept through last night had roughed up the water so much that the waves were pounding against the wall on the back end of the beach, submerging nearly everything. No one could even walk out, let alone swim. We came back again at 11am, when the water was still rough, but had subsided a little. We each ventured into the water and got tossed around a bit, but it wasn't until after noon that the waves had calmed down enough for them to lay out half a dozen lounge chairs. We snagged the four best ones and had them until well into the afternoon. It was a lazy day with lots of swimming and reading and sunning ourselves.
Italy, Days 4-8 (Aug 25-30). Tellaro/Fiascherino/Lerici. We began our beachside segment of our vacation by arriving in Fiascherino. Our hotel listed the address as Tellaro, but considering it's only a few feet after the sign delimiting the beginning of Fiascherino, I think that's likely not correct. The hotel has gorgeous views of the cove (Fiascherino Bay) from nearly every room, which greatly made up for the miniscule bathroom where you fall out of the tiny shower stall onto the toilet and bidet (why, oh why did they think this bathroom had room for a bidet?). Our room also had the misfortune of being just out of reach of the wifi, so we had to go out into the hallway to check our email. But over all, I'd have to give the hotel a positive rating because it was practically on top of the beach and the staff were excessively friendly: free bandaids, a free beach towel, and really reasonably priced drinks at the bar.
We had two choices for beaches -- one whose descent down the cliffside was 30m to the left down the road from the hotel, the other whose descent was 15m to the right. The first day we decided to go to the beach on the left, which was crowded and without good places to lay down your towel. Dan and Glor were not happy, since it seemed much rougher going than the beaches they had been to before. Luckily, the next day we tried the beach to the right and it was significantly more pleasant, with rental chairs for Dan and Glor and a sandy/lightly pebbly stretch of free beach for me and Christian. This beach was its own little cove, where the water was clean and dropped off rather quickly, so that you were quickly over your head.
Even though the beach is not pebbly, but coarsely sandy, which is unusual for the Mediterranean, it still has the typical Mediterranean rocks scattered around in the water. These are sharp, lava rocks on which you can cut and scrape your feet, and indeed Christian sliced open his big toe on last day. At least it was the last day, so he didn't have his beach time or sightseeing cut short.
The coastline's so beautiful in Southern France and Western Italy, but now that we've experienced it twice, I'd say that I much prefer the smooth sandy beaches of NJ. Now, in terms of eye candy and how much of it is "wrapped", that's another story. ;-) Our beach was crowded, but with the exception of us and a German family or two, it seemed to mostly be Italians on our beach. We'd arrive early in the morning and then leave around 11 or 12 when it started getting really crowded. We'd usually come back late in the afternoon again, after people had started leaving. This way we still got our swimming in, but avoided the crowds -- a major convenience of having you hotel on the beach.
On Saturday, our last full day, we intended to go down to the beach at 9am, rent lounge chairs and spend the whole day there. We arrived early in the morning only to find that the rain clouds that had swept through last night had roughed up the water so much that the waves were pounding against the wall on the back end of the beach, submerging nearly everything. No one could even walk out, let alone swim. We came back again at 11am, when the water was still rough, but had subsided a little. We each ventured into the water and got tossed around a bit, but it wasn't until after noon that the waves had calmed down enough for them to lay out half a dozen lounge chairs. We snagged the four best ones and had them until well into the afternoon. It was a lazy day with lots of swimming and reading and sunning ourselves.