Life's a Beach!

After two evenings out so far in week two, what we really needed was some R&R at the beach. This is just what was in store for us on Friday afternoon. We endured classes in the morning - some of us with pounding headaches (largely the result of vats of wine the night before); we donned our bikinis and headed to Porto Recanati on the Rimini coast.

There was an initial disagreement as to where we would all go once we hit the beach, and then what we would do there. It soon transpired that if we wanted to sunbathe we'd have to pay for sunloungers and the like; if we wanted to go to the free beach we'd have to contest with a whole pile of shingly rocks. Some of our party wanted to play football, I looked at the stones and thought it would probably be a lot better for my feet if I didn't (there was also the minor problem of not being able to play football).

What I really wanted to do was sunbathe, but I wasn't paying for the privilege. This seemed to be quite a popular belief and so Bree, Gaby, Lynette, her housemate and myself started trawling the coastline for either a nice free beach or a cafe.

At this point I think it's time for me to bring Lynette's housemate out of anonymity and introduce her to you as Susan. Ever since Perugia our acquaintance had been growing and we'd formed an alliance in class against Wendy and her bizarre teaching and even more bizarre games. Susan had been there at Babaloo and the Castle and she was with us again at the beach.

I got on really well with her. I confess I hadn't been sure at first, but we'd got to know each other over the week and we'd really started to get to know each other and found we had a lot of common interests. She was originally from Croatia and was mostly legs.

So the full desperate gang walked along the seafront scouring cafes and bars for available tables. We found one and got settled. We stayed there for some time, singing German songs (don't ask) and learning miscellaneous Portuguese phrases (again, let's not go there). Time wore on and we decided to venture into the town for a wander. We wandered prolifically and soon wandered into a restaurant for dinner.

It had been the first trip we'd done that was really up to us to do whatever. All the other trips had had guided tours and tight schedules. This one was the first one where we'd been dumped and told to come back when it got dark.

We feasted on pizza and wound our way back to the coach stop, but not before taking a comical picture that said something on cross-cultural relations...