Gimme Gimme More [Viareggio]

With the previous night behind us and yet another rainy day ahead, the roomies and I showered and padded down to the dining room where a homemade breakfast was waiting. We’re talking tarts, bread, fruit, cereal… the works. Organic food heaven. Excellent.

A few minutes later the other two couples staying in the B&B came downstairs, both of whom were equally as adorable as our host. They didn’t speak English. We didn’t speak Italian. Breakfast was a hilarious mess. We probably spent two hours at that table in a mish mash of theatrics and muddled languages. There were photos, phone calls to English speaking relatives and shameless plugs for their sons. Like I said: absolutely adorable.

            Afterwards, the roomsters and I decided to suck it up and go to Pisa despite the building thunderstorm. A few train hops later and we were there. It wasn’t the most spectacular city in the world (I guess I should have expected that from a town whose claim to fame is faulty architecture) but it was quaint. It didn’t take very long to get to the Leaning Tower, and I have to admit the whole area was really impressive. Spray-painted Elon-green grass covered the whole piazza and the buildings looked freshly power washed. The church was huge, the duomo was too expensive and the tower was still leaning. Check that little baby off my Life List.

               Then it was back to the train station to Pietra Santa, where my mom had studied in Italy and our friends from the previous evening had gushed so much about it. Pretty much a ghost town in the winter, we walked around a bit as the sun set and then got a glass of wine while we waited for the train back to Viareggio.

            Now obviously, as with any reasonable city, the Viareggio buses stopped running at 8 pm on a Saturday night. We got back at 8:05. Pouring rain once more, we made the hour and a half trek back to the hostel by foot. After a bit of sulking and drying off, our hostel man gave us a lift over to Carnivale and the two couples gave us a lift back later. Thank goodness.

            Our final day in Viareggio was the big parade for Carnivale. 

Hostel man gave us a lift over and let me tell you - these floats blew me away. Plasma screen TVs, animatronics, smoke machines, music blasting, live bands performing on them, dancers all over the place… they were incredible. The best part: they were all political - not just fluff. There was Hillary Clinton dangling a baby George Bush with war paint all over his face, one about global warming, one about the Italian political cabinets… it was awesome. As the parade finished, we headed on back to the train station for our epic ride home. Viareggio wasn’t necessarily the ideal vacation, but it sure toughened us up and made for quite a few stories.