Viareggio

From the train, about 20min before Viareggio

On Friday the boys and I went to Viareggio, a seaside holiday town on the southern end of the Italian Riviera. It is a beautiful location, with tall mountains rising behind the city and long sandy beaches. We arrived and found a visitor centre for a map. We then walked from there down to the jetty that is near the boat harbour. The walk was hot, with little shade (and no hat for me - I lost it in Milan) down a corso area that had lots of shops including all the major designers. The walk to the jetty took us about 25min and was only about 1/3 of the length of the entire corso area. This entire length of beach is private clubs where you pay a fee for a deck chair, umbrella and access to a clubhouse type area with restaurant and change rooms, not dissimilar to the beach that we go to in Jeddah.

Showing the lines of deck chairs and umbrellas at the private beaches

Corso area - shops and beach on left, central park area in middle

one of the cafes

beach and mountains

We walked out along the jetty, I purchased a hat from one of the stalls along the way and admired the view back across the very crowded and packed beach to the lovely buildings of the corso and the mountains. We then set out to walk to the 'free' beach on the other side of the canal. We had no idea exactly how far it was and with very little shade..... no trees at all along the corso area on the other side of the canal. Along the way we stopped at one of the clubs that had a restaurant that anyone could eat at. After being refreshed by water, juice and a lovely whole fish (we shared it) and some chips we continued.

From the jetty, beach snakes right around in the distance

We were dressed for walking so had runners on, I didn't take mine off as they were supplying my ankle with support after the sprain of the day before - and the boys kept theirs on for the 500m odd walk from the road over the sand dunes and onto the beach. They then took them off and splashed briefly in the water. However, despite instructions not too get very wet Jacob sat down in the water so we left soon after. Of course, they were wet and sandy and couldn't put their shoes on....... so had to walk back almost the whole 500m of sand in bare feet - it was 3pm in the afternoon on a very hot sunny day - with the dark almost black sand of the Mediterranean - I'll let you imagine the noise that was made!

Anyway, we found a stretch of dead grass and they sat to brush off the sand and put their shoes on. We then walked through a pine forest that covered many hectares of the city - that wasn't much cooler as the path was so wide and the trees cut back from the edge so there was no shade from the trees. Where the trees were closer it was lovely. We followed the track all the way back to a campground area - passing lots of people on bikes. If I were to return, and I think it would be nice to spend some time here in May/June or Sept/Oct, then I would definitely be looking to get bikes to get around!

The canal we crossed looking down the jetty on rhs

The canal looking back towards town

One section of the marina - lots of big nice boats!

We walked back to the town and through to the train as my ankle by this stage had re-swollen after so much walking. We arrived at the station to find a train leaving for Firenze and so we hopped aboard - EXCEPT - the board had not said that it was first going to a small town to be parked there for over an hour to be cleaned..... followed by a return trip in the opposite direction for a period and then to Pisa and finally to Florence. So the morning trip took about 1.5 hrs and the return trip took almost 5! Unfortunately, once we were on the train we were committed - so instead of being home at around 6pm we did not get here until 9pm! Got to love the Italian train service!

This is one of the many shed that were around for repairing/building boats

Path through the pine forest - a sort of shady bit.