I’d say there was a lot of misery stored up in that weekend in Viareggio. No doubt about that. There were a lot of quiet moments for certain. A lot of stewing. A lot of deep breaths. A lot of times we almost hopped back on that train for Perugia. But we made it. We survived. And damn it, we’ve got a lot of stories out of that place for sure. The grandparents are advised not to read this little gem.
As the train pulled into the station, there was definitely a fleeting moment of panic. Viareggio was no Florence or Venice. It wasn’t clean. It wasn’t pretty. To be honest, it looked terrifying. We’d been directed there for Carnivale, promised a genuine Italian experience, rather than the mainstream events held in Venice for tourists. This place was certainly more interesting. Sprawling beach town that it was, finding our hostel quickly became an issue. We couldn’t find the address on the city map plastered to the billboard and no one spoke a word of English. Standing at the bus stop clueless, forced to stare at an enormous billboard advertising half naked girls at some sleazy strip club, I fished around my bag praying that I’d remembered the phone number for the B&B. After a few phone calls, we were directed onto a bus and told to tell the driver to drop us off at a camping ground. Easy enough until we actually got on the bus and he wanted to know which camping ground we meant. Who knows. We said all the Italian vocabulary we could muster and hoped for the best.
He dropped us off on the side of the road in a pile of mud. We stood there, LL Bean backpacks strapped to ourselves in front of a barbed wire fence, slush up to our ankles with no one but a man paving the same section of mud over and over next to us. Then it started to rain. We walked. A half hour later, still walking without a map or any direction, we stumbled upon the road we needed. Thank. God.
The B&B was a quaint little house with a garden and porch swing out front. On the outskirts of the city, it proved to be a very homey atmosphere. Our room was a good size. I got the top bunk. Things were looking up. After settling in, we went downstairs for some direction of what to do in the city. The old man that owned the place, very quiet with silver hair, pulled out a map for us to inspect. This is where we are. He circled it. This is where Carnivale events are. He circled the other side of the map. I guess Venice had drained me of all the positive karma I had left. Damn it.
He sent us to the beach for the sunset. From there, we could walk down the stretch of beach to Carnivale. Another great idea that soon became a bit troublesome. Walking down a narrow pathway in a deserted forest to get to the beach as the sun was setting was perhaps not my favorite means of travel in the world, but the sunset was gorgeous. We whipped off our shoes, froze our toes in the sand and began our walk to the town center. Then it got dark and we found ourselves in a shipyard. Considering all the lovely things that you always hear about shipyards after dark, we decided to wander a little further away from the coast. Finally we came across a road that had some potential and followed it up until we got ourselves into town. Finally!
Starving at this point, we happened upon a fixed menu for 15 euro a person and decided to be big ballers and go for it. The meal was phenomenal. We got a bottle of wine, water, pasta, seafood (some weird squid-like animal that had the perfect place in my belly) and delicious bread. Totally worth it. Throughout the meal, a man from the table over kept glancing over at Ashlee, finally swinging over to our table on his way out for a cigarette break to compliment her on her occhi bellisimi. The next thing we know, the waitress has brought us over drinks compliments of the gentleman at that table and we end up moving our things over to chat with him and his two friends - one of whom was a woman, Monica, which kind of diffused the threatening part of the situation.
Next thing we know, they’ve begun to order us all the Italian drinks they can think of. The best wine. The café corretto. The limoncello with vodka and lemon gelato. Shots. We chat. We laugh. We exchange Italian and English. We talk with had gestures. Monica tells us that we are friends for a night. Tomorrow we forget, but tonight we are friends. Ashlee refuses coffee. Monica tells her “no coffee, no party!” I go to the bathroom. Amber goes out for a smoke. We return to pay the bill and find out that our entire meal has been taken care of, compliments of Massimiliano, the man who looks dangerously close to Slash with his long, curly black hair. Then we head out for the Carnivale nightlife.
At this point the street is raging as though it’s Halloween on Franklin Street with the liquor licenses of Bourbon Street. Music is pumping, floats move up and down the street with people dancing on top. Smurfs, superheroes, drag queens, drum circles, dance parties on random stages, bowls of sangria… it’s madness. Massimiliano begins sifting through the crowd, showing us the sites with Monica spouting out her one-liners along the way. “No coffee, no party! No vodka, no party!” We pop in a few bars along the way, Massimilliano treating us. We end up at a stage where everyone is dancing. It starts to rain again and everyone is dancing anyway. Our hair is soaked, our clothing is sopping, confetti is flying. The Italians put American raging to shame.
The roomies meet some gentlemen. I chat with Massimiliano. We look back over at the roomies. “I don’t like those men,” he says. I tell him they’re just having fun. He tells me the men are taking advantage. His face is getting twitchy. I try to talk him down. He gets twitchier. Next thing I know he’s ripped off one of the guys and hurls him into the crowd. People start screaming. The boy takes off and Massimiliano follows him. We’re all standing there, not quite sure what to do and by the looks of Monica’s face this isn’t the first time something like this has happened. The fight travels on back through the crowd towards us and at this time Monica and her other friend have rushed over to intervene, talking Massimiliano down. He starts pacing back and forth while we try to shoo the two boys away from us and the situation looks alleviated until Massimiliano turns and I see the knife he has clutched behind his back. His fingers are playing with it and he’s gripping it so hard that blood is trickling down his hands. Time to go.
We start weaving through the crowd back the way we came, adrenaline pumping with an understood vote not to walk back to the B&B on the shore. We choose a road that’s a straight shot back and start booking it. As panic starts to subside and we start taking in the situation, we realize that the road may not have been the best choice after all. The streetlights have disappeared and the road is heavily wooded. Rain is still beating down on us and there isn’t a car in sight. We walk faster and keep our mouths shut, deciding it better not to speak English. For a half hour we walk in silence in the dark, praying that the intersection appears soon. At last it does and we pick up the pace faster, pull the key out and scramble inside, draping our clothes on the heater and going to bed.
And that was just our first night in Viareggio.
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