Just returned from a weekend trip to Monte Argentario, a beach town near Tuscany. I know I've definitely been in Italy for a while because my skin now has the color of a pepperoni! The Tuscan sun was strong, despite my best intentions at battling it with my trusty spf 45. I went with two french friends and we set up a tent at a campsite a mere 2 minutes from the beach. I learned how to play raccatoni, a popular game where you bounce a small ball back and forth with a partner using a wooden paddle in the water. I also went to a Sangra Gastronomica in a small village nearby. During the summer, most small towns have some kind of Sangra, or food festival, where they serve their local specialty, such as eel, polenta, pasta, beer, etc. The sangra I went to was a general 'Food' festival where I had a delicious plate of seafood risotto and local beer. Then, we watched the dance floor, where the whole town was boogying in a line. For every song that came on they had a different line dance and everybody seemed to know the dance. I couldn't figure out how they managed to memorize such distinctly different dances for every song, so I finally asked somebody. She explained that everyone on the dance floor had taken the town dance class together and today was the only day of the year to show off all their hard work. It was pretty incredible to watch.
Yesterday, on the drive back from the beach, we stopped at a local hotspring about 2 hours away from Roma. Its a free, natural hotspring with lots of little pools leading up to a waterfall. If it weren't so difficult to navigate to and from Rome I would be there every weekend, it's gorgeous. However, the drive to and from is through the countryside of Italy, which takes you on small windy, rocky roads. The scenery looks surprisingly similar to Walla Walla, with small rolling hills in the distant, large fields with corn or melons or grapes growing, and warm warm wind. We passed hundreds of agriturismos on the way back home-- small, family-run farm houses that grow some kind of produce and open their doors to tourists. Many of these agriturismos used to be rustic, but with so much tourist attraction they are becoming more high-end, with restaurants and swimming pools and fancy accommodations.
August in Rome is surreal. The city looks like a ghost town. There's hardly any traffic, most shops are closed down, and the streets are quiet. All Romans are either at the beach or in the mountains. It's an interesting time to see, although the local grocery store is closing tomorrow for a week so it will be even more interesting to see what happens when the stragglers are left without groceries.
Another highlight of the past month was a solo weekend trip to Paris, where I saw the sites, picniced on bridges, and ate croissants, and heard more English in a day than I have my entire time in Rome.
I will post pictures tomorrow!
