It’s that time of year again, when the majority of Italians head to the coast for weeks of relaxation and sun worshipping! Of course at the first sign of the sun they instantly transform into beautiful sun-kissed people with flawless tans! You rarely see an Italian with dodgy tan lines or streaky fake tan! For the rest of us mere mortals (i.e. English rose complexion) we have to put in some serious effort, so my best friend and I headed to the beach for a week of sun, sea and sand! It also marked the end of the school year and for both of us our first year in business – so the perfect excuse for a little break!

We headed to Viareggio in Northern Tuscany, a small but rather charming little town on the coast of the Tyrrhenian Sea. We had little else on our agenda except for spending the day on the beach and going for long dinners in the evenings and walks on the beach (a perfect romantic week really – except with my best friend rather than a boy! haha!!)

We stayed in a lovely little hotel right on the beach front, with very friendly and helpful staff and managed to move rooms on the second night so we had a beach view! The beach mainly consists of private beaches, but it is worth paying for their facilities, as they have bathrooms, hot showers and some have swimming pools and bars! Plus you get an umbrella and sun loungers! Somehow we managed to convince them to give us two sun loungers whilst everyone else on our beach only had one (including families!) so we were feeling rather lucky and slightly smug!  Taking turns to lie on one, would not have been fun!

There were lots of great restaurants in the town, serving of course fresh seafood, so every evening we had a feast of sword fish, crab, prawns, tuna and all sorts of delicious food!

The sea was beautiful to swim in and very refreshing, however, it was teeming with jelly fish and so we had to constantly be on jelly fish watch! Also there were numerous crabs on the seabed and on the last morning, one nipped me right on my big toe! I was not impressed!

We returned to Milan tanned (and a little sunburnt), relaxed and ready for the summer! However we are in a sort of heat wave in the city at the moment and I would do anything to be back at the beach, but alas work is calling me! Three more weeks though and I will be on holiday back in sunny (haha) England!

Anna