World Italy Emilia Romagna Ravenna

CLINT'S SEMESTER ABROAD

Villemarina, Italy Jul 3, 2005

We took off the next morning and headed farther south along the coast. When we got close to the cities of Ravenna and Rimini, we decided to start looking for somewhere to stop for awhile. This area was kind of the main stretch of beach area on the eastern side of Italy. We ended up driving around for quite a while, checking various campgrounds and hostels until we found a place in the small town of Villemarina. It was a really nice hostel, about 20 Euros per person per night, but it included free breakfast!! And the rooms were really nice with balconies and everything, so we felt pretty lucky. I only had one other guy in my room, about my age, so that was ok too. That afternoon and evening we just relaxed and walked around the town. It was pretty small, but basically connected to all the other small towns along the coast. It was pretty touristy; I guess it's a pretty popular area with the Germans, so everyone spoke German but not so much English. We went down to the beach, but the water was kind of dirty so we didn't swim much. We sat down in some beach chairs, but soon some guy came up and told us we had to pay like 10 Euros for half a day to use them!! And most of them were empty! We were kind of mad, but we went over to the free beach, which was kind of crowded and hung out there for a few hours. We also spent some time walking around all the shops, and I bought a beach towel and some swimming trunks since I had forgotten to bring them. I also saw my first real-life Ferrari, so that was pretty cool. After eating noodles and street vendor food for the past few days, we decided to try and find a restaurant and get some good Italian food. This proved to be an exhausting task. First of all, we were surprised to find that there weren't very many restaurants in the area, even though it was a very touristy place! And since we wanted something good, but not too expensive, like pizza or pasta, we spent close to a couple hours walking around the town trying to find something. By the time we did we were starving, but it paid off. Eva had a pizza and later said it was one of the best she had on the whole trip. I had pasta with mussels, and it wasn't the greatest, but still good. Since we were in wine country now instead of beer country, we had some very good, cheap wine with our meal.

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