Italy Beaches

he beach resort of Monterosso, the largest village of the Cinque Terre in Liguria, north Italy. It's typically small, stony and crowded with pay umbrellas, though pleasant nonetheless. Click on the image for more Italy Beach Pictures.

Italy, with plenty of sun and 8,500 km [5,345 miles] of coastline, is one of Europe's prime destinations for beach holidays though many of the beaches - especially on the mainland - are small, rocky or shingle and packed with local people, especially at the weekends. The Italian part of the Mediterranean Sea is pretty warm by June and a perfect temperature between July and September - providing the sun has been busy during early summer.
As far as sea nasties are concerned, sharks or other deadly critters are not at play in the Mediterranean, though small jellyfish may multiply considerably if the sea is particularly warm and can cause unpleasantness. Weaver fish with their toxic needles and habit of snuggling into the sand of shallow waters are rare but not unknown.

Italy's Riviera in Liguria - that's north Italy stretching from France to Tuscany - sports some of the most popular beaches in the country.
The Riviera, adjacent or even including some Cinque Terre villages, is a series of small towns clustered in bays surrounded by tree-clad hills and many are connected by fast ferries April-Oct or a very convenient railway, especially useful since access to the towns by road is complex and parking is nigh on impossible in midsummer.
The Riviera is primarily frequented by Italians so living is not costly and food and drink supplies are good quality, though pay-parasols tend to hog most of the beaches.
Though beaches can be a far from peaceful, they are often quite enchanting - young and old in bikinis, packed like sardines into small free beach areas, or cruising up and down the sands nattering to the neighbours like a busy Italian market day.
Watersports are often limited to pedalos, snorkelling, kayaking and windsurfing. i.e. Jetskiers had better look elsewhere.

Rome's nearest beach resort, Ostia, is notoriously tacky and unpleasant but about 1.5 hours southwest of Rome and halfway to Naples are a couple of good size strips of sand: one, Terracina, is huge and relatively undeveloped with plenty of free space, though the tranquil town of that name is quite a walk away, so transport is useful.
The other, Sperlonga, is a classic beach resort with long promenade, packed parasol pay areas and limited free sand squatting. Pictures of the two beaches appear on the next couple of pages.

Women only beach in Riccione, North Italy:
An unusual though possibly discrimatory [and thus illegal] beach is open on Italy's Adriatic coast at Riccione, beach 134 also known as Pink Beach. Men and children are forbidden though a male hairdresser and lifeguard are permitted, as are dogs. The beach is not a lesbian stamping ground, more of a opportunity for oppressed Italian females to escape from male-dominated society for a while. Services on offer include beauty tips, keep-fit classes, cookery classes and manicures.

Adriatic and Mediterranean Islands: Some of the most beautiful of Italy's beaches can be found around the Adriatic and Amalfi coasts or on the islands such as Sicily, which has large sandy beaches on the southern coast, while arguably the best are in Sardinia, many of which are still unspoilt. See Sardinia Beach Pictures

Jellyfish plague: In late summer 2006 much of the Mediterranean - from Spain's Costa del Sol thru France's south coast and down Italy as far as Sicily - suffered from jellyfish invasion, specifically the mauve stinger or Pelagia noctiluca [so called because they glow at night]. The stings are painful and unpleasant but not life-threatening, unless a swimmer has a weak heart, a sever allergic reaction or panics on encountering a shoal of blobbies and drowns...
The cause of the stinger explosion is the usual suspect - global warming boosting water temperatures by a couple of degrees as well as increased pollution-derived nutrients and reduced cool freshwater entering from rivers. However, overfishing of anchovies [which compete with jellies for plankton salad], turtles and tuna fish [which eat jellies for dessert] has also aided the mauve climate avenger's expansionist tendencies.

Making It Work in Italy

Making It Work in Italy
Live the Dream of Becoming a Resident
Articles and Photos by John Becker
The dream began as a wish, a simple statement of vast, vague longing: Let’s try to live in Italy for a year. It was easy to be overtaken with the romance of it all, for in picturing a year in Italy one thinks only of postcard images and long slow meals in sunny piazzas that exist, somehow, outside the influence of time. But once we decided to actually make the move, we endeavored to somehow find the real Italy, and to truly experience another culture through immersion. Up until the moment we left—stepping on a plane in the Boston airport with one-way tickets in our hands—we still held our original dream intact and unspecified. We landed in Italy with no sure employment, no set destination, and $5,000. Six weeks later we were settled, employed, and immensely content.

The cast of travelers, I should note, were two, Alicia and I. We met our senior year of college, and we had been dating for five years. We were both 26, each having just finished our second year teaching in America. I had been teaching English at a boarding school in Connecticut. Because I was living on campus and not paying rent I was able to put aside a few thousand dollars for the trip. I had been to Italy twice before, both times briefly, and had no knowledge of the language. Alicia, on the other hand, was a bit of an Italophile. She had studied abroad in Siena as an undergraduate and fell in love with the culture and way of life. She returned to school in America the next semester and switched her major to Italian Language and Literature. Two years after graduation she started teaching Italian at a public high school in western Massachusetts and became a dual citizen.

Alicia’s ancestry is pure Italian. Even though no one in her family had lived in Italy for nearly one hundred years (even her grandparents were born in America) she was still eligible to become an Italian citizen, and for years she had considered it. The idea came to her during college when she was thinking of spending a summer volunteering for WWOOF (World-Wide Organization of Organic Farms),www.wwoof.it/gb/about.html, in Italy. A related website mentioned that American citizens with Italian heritage could apply to become dual citizens, Italian and American. The process was actually easier than one might expect: Alicia spent several days at the Italian Consulate in Boston completing forms and finding out what documents she needed. She then called the hall of records in her great-grandparents’ hometown of Anzano di Puglia to get birth and marriage certificates. From the Boston Registry of Public Records she needed certificates of naturalization, marriage, birth, and death, proving that she was, in fact, the descendant she claimed to be. Finally, she asked her grandfather and father to sign notarized statements saying that they had never officially renounced their Italian citizenship. The entire process took less than six months and cost under $200 (including passport fee, phone calls, and postage to Italy, and the cost of obtaining and verifying the American documents—by far the most expensive step). In the end Alicia had a bright new Italian passport, good for 10 years, and the right to live and work without a visa in Italy or any other EU country.

But despite Alicia’s dual citizenship and her résumé packed with teaching experience, she was unable to find a job before we left. She sent out dozens of emails and letters, talked her way through several phone cards, and scoured the Internet for openings and postings. She applied to all types of schools: public, private, language institutes, and department of defense schools. Nothing promising came back. What we learned was that Italian employers place very little value in résumés showing degrees from American universities they have never heard of and letters of reference from people they don’t know. Instead, emphasis is on professional interactions and interpersonal rapport. But while it was nearly impossible to find work before we left America, work offers abounded once we settled in Italy. Ten days after finding our apartment Alicia had two job offers—one teaching and one translating— and several other prospects.

In the end, the aspect of our trip that proved most challenging was getting to the point of feeling settled. Because we left America without a set destination, our first few weeks in Italy were spent trying to decide where we wanted to live. We ended up in Perugia, the capital of Umbria. After three weeks of wandering through cities that felt either too touristy or too isolated, Perugia felt just right. The lesson we learned was this: it is best to find your place to live first, and a job second. As we were traveling around the country, we tried certain towns or citiesfor a few days, checking the want ads and making calls, but doing this with a hotel (or even a hostel) as a home base ate up our savings at an alarming rate: €30 to €50 per night for sleeping, €20 to €40 to eat, €10 for internet and phone, plus the cost of travel in between. Once we had our place, though, we could live cheaply: our rent totaled €10 per day and we could now cook for ourselves and spend much less on food. The palpable feeling of stability that comes with unpacking helped us focus all our energy on the job hunt. Additionally, the greatest thing a potential employer can hear is, “I just moved to town and can start immediately.”

Finding housing in a university town was amazingly easy. We arrived in late September, stayed one night in a hostel and were living in our apartment by the second night. We accomplished this by merely going to the student center at the university. There we found bulletin boards that were thickly plastered with housing announcements. We called four and set up visits. We only saw two. At our second meeting our housematesto- be had espresso waiting when we walked in the door. We took one look at our room—15th-century exposed beam ceiling, 18’ x 18’ floor plan, two windows with expansive views of the city church spires, and olive farms on the distant slopes of the Apennine mountains—and accepted on the spot. Our three housemates were students at the university, all in their mid-twenties and each spoke at least some English. In our second week in the apartment they taught us how to make tiramisu and we made them an apple pie.


A glimpse of the author’s apartment, located on the second floor above the arch.

Our landlord, like most in Italy, allowed us to rent month-to-month. And, while we did have to pay our first and last month’s rent before we moved in, this gave us two months of guaranteed residence. Should worst come to worst, we thought, and we are unable to find jobs, we will head back to America after those two months are up, having not succeeded in living in Italy for year, but having enjoyed a lengthy vacation instead.

From the beginning our dream was to live as Italian as possible for one year. We wanted to be residents, not visitors. So much of modern tourism is about exoticism and reduction, about taking a picture and buying something to bring home. We set out to find the Italy that existed beyond Roman ruins and renaissance art, outside of cappuccino and Chianti. To this end, nothing could surpass living with Italians, for I will always consider our first dinner with our roommates to be my most Italian experience. As the sky sweetened to dark blue as the sun went down slowly into the mountains, Dianna, from Abruzzo, brought out a small jar of her grandmother’s pasta sauce. Lara, Sicilian, cut up provolone cheese from her father’s farm. And eating on plastic plates with dub reggae music in the background we savored food that would outshine any authentic restaurant, for we had found just what we came for.

John Becker is a teacher, graduate student, and WWOOF volunteer currently living in Perugia, Italy.

Italy: Money and Costs

For the mainstream traveller, a credit card can mean never having to have more than a handful of euros on you. Some small pensioni, trattorie and pizzerie will only accept cash but ATMs are widespread and easy to use.

Currency, Changing Your Money, Money Tips, Price Guide, Tipping
Currency
Name Euro
Symbol € Euro notes come in denominations of 5, 10, 20, 50, 100, 200 and 500. It is often difficult to get change for a €500.00 note.

One euro is divided into 100 cents or centimes. Coins of 1, 2 and 5 centimes are copper-coloured; coins of 10, 20 and 50 centimes are gold-coloured; 1 and 2 euro coins are gold-and-silver coloured. It's a good idea to keep a supply of various coins for parking meters, laundrettes, tolls etc.

Changing Your Money
Banks and post offices are the most reliable places to change travellers cheques and generally offer the best rates; shop around for the lowest commission deals and the shortest queues. Credit cards are widely accepted in Italy and the exchange rate is usually better than for cash or travellers cheques.

Money Tips
Those on a tight budget will find eating and sleeping in Italy expensive. Prudent backpackers might squeeze by on around €40.00 to €45.00 a day if they stay in hostels, make their own sandwiches, avoid indulging in alcohol and don't visit too many museums. If you want to stay in comfortable hotels, eat out regularly in restaurants and visit lots of museums and galleries, you should budget at least €100-150 a day; hiring a car will double your expenses. Be aware that Italy has more luxury hotels, expensive restaurants and shops to die for than you can shake a Gold Amex card at, so be prepared to stretch your budget if you are easily tempted.

Sample Price Guide
litre of milk € 1.40 CD € 15.00 can of soft drink € 0.80 basic 'Serie A' football ticket € 15.00 litre of petrol € 1.40 litre of bottled water € 1.00 souvenir t-shirt € 10.00 slice of pizza € 2.00 bottle of Peroni € 2.00 Average Room Prices
Low Mid High Deluxe
€14-40 €40-120 €120-200 €200+
Average Meal Prices
Low Mid High Deluxe
€5-10 €10-20 €20-30 €30+

Tipping
Service charges are included in your restaurant bill, so you are not expected to tip. It is common practice, however, to leave a small amount. In bars, Italians will usually leave any small change as a tip, but this is by no means obligatory. Be aware that prices in Italian bars and cafes double (sometimes even triple) if you sit down. Tipping taxi drivers is not necessary, but your hotel porter will expect a little something.

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Italy

Europe's kinky over-the-knee boot has it all: popes, painters, polenta, paramours, poets, political puerility and potentates. Its dreamy light and sumptuous landscapes seem made for romance, and its three millennia of history, culture and cuisine seduces just about everyone.

You can visit Roman ruins, gawk at Renaissance art, stay in tiny medieval hill towns, go skiing in the Alps, explore the canals of Venice and gaze at beautiful churches. Naturally you can also indulge in the pleasures of la dolce vita : good food, good wine and improving your wardrobe.
Country Full Name
Italian Republic

Population
57,300,000

Currency
Name: Euro
Code: EUR
Symbol: €
Electrical Plugs

220V 50Hz

Languages Spoken
Official: Italian

Time Zones
GMT/UTC +1 (+2 in summer) (Central European Time)


Country Dialing Code
+39

Weights & Measures
Metric

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36 Hours in Naples, Italy

The Italian port city might be knee-high in trash. And, sure, it’s been subject to bloody Mafia wars and political corruption. But there’s real vibrancy, and even a little beauty, in all that chaos.
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