Let’s try this again. 

So we went to the sea to spend the weekend with the grandparents.  They are at the same place as last year, a town called Alessio on the Ligurian coast, (Italian Riviera).  The center of Alessio is called “the bowels” referring to the tangled mess of streets that it is.  After much back tracking and swearing (on GP’s part) we found our hotel where we’d booked for the night.  Hotel is a generous word for this place.  It is called the Hanbury Tennis Club and is actually a century old tennis club modeled after Wimbleton.  The club house is a gorgeous old building with a pro-shop, changing rooms, restaurant/bar and meeting rooms.  There are 17 courts on the property and the club seems to be pretty busy.  The “hotel” part of the property is an old villa that is used as a rooming house for the kids who come to spend the summer at tennis camp.  The villa is decadent in the true meaning of the word.  It is structurally beautiful but hasn’t been touched in years.  The bathroom in our room is circa 1950 plumbing.  The wooden shutters are missing slats and hardware and may well take out somebody walking below.  It hasn’t seen a coat of paint since it was built and I won’t even bother talking about the furniture.  But it was surprisingly clean and quiet, the breakfast in the restaurant was great and it was fun watching all the players in their “whites” while we ate.

We checked in early so as to spend the day at the beach.  I mentioned the beaches last year.  They are divided into privately run “bagni” or “baths” that you pay a fee to enter.  The fee gives you a lounge chair, umbrella, showers, changing rooms and lots of extras depending on which “bath” you choose.  There are some that are more family-oriented with play areas and toys, some that have bars or restaurants, more space or less space depending on the price.  Ours was the “bath” that the grandparents and their 100 companions were using.  It is directly across the street from their hotel so easy for them all to toddle back and forth for their meals.  Consequently we were surrounded by old folks which made me feel very young and in shape until I noticed that even in old age some of these Italian women look good.  Damn.  There was one woman who had to be in her 70’s who was topless.  She was so brown all over that her nipples had disappeared!  Her breasts were monstrous and hung down to her waist.  She looked like a well fed version of the tribal women shown in National Geographic.

But I’m not complaining because it was hot and sunny and the water was very warm so we swam and swam.  I took a nice long walk and thought about how very different the beach experience is here to Maine.  Nature has very little to do with Liguria.  There are, however, sea birds that look like Dodos.  They are some sort of giant gulls with large black, down curving beaks.  They’re also sort of uncoordinated on land and waddle-run to take off for flight.  That’s about it for wildlife.

For dinner we drove inland a bit to find something good and not overpriced as everything at the sea tends to be.  Liguria is notorious for ripping tourists off.  We went back into the foothills of the Maritime Alps looking for a road that supposedly has all sorts of good restaurants.  Even using the GPS we got all turned around and drove for an hour before finding anything.  I was starving!  The food was pretty good and thankfully finding our way back was easier.  Yesterday was cooler and gray so we left earlyish and grabbed pizza for dinner on the way home.

This week my tangles with Italian bureaucracy will start again as I have to see a physical therapist about my hip and try to sign up for yoga classes.  Though so much of the health care system here is great, being Italian, they can’t make it easy.  In order to see a specialist you have to get a prescription from your GP, (like a referral in the US), and have to pay a “ticket”, (co-pay), before the visit.   The problem is that in order to pay the ticket you have to go somewhere and insert the prescription receipt in some sort of machine and all this needs to be done before the appointment or they won’t let you in.  I don’t know where to find the machine in which to insert my receipt and pay my ticket!  I’ll find it….  Xxoo me