A Viareggio

The view from our balcony at 9.30 yesterday morning.

Repaid in full today for my e-mail and SMS smugness about yesterday's blazing sunshine.

Despite being serially drenched I really liked Viareggio, a seaside resort forty bus minutes from Lucca and the major town on a stretch of the north Tuscan coast called the Versilia.

Reputed as a big party town in the summer, it's on its way to shutting down for the winter now, but still good for a visit. The too-cool TimeOut guide went heavy on Viareggio's kick as a gay hangout but I'd guess you'd need to know where to look; nothing was apparent unless heavy rain has been claimed by the gay community.

It has a lengthy promenade of two- and three-storey Art Nouveau buildings now housing ice-creameries, bars and shops. At the southern end is a marina and a couple of dockyards good for a half-hour meander amongst the boats, and then a large nature reserve/woods running out of town alongside the beach. At the other end of the the promenade are apparently more woods and a huge collection of workshops for carnival floats, though I didn't get that far as the volume of rain became farcical. I tried taking photos of it to prove something or other, but couldn't do it justice.

Anyway I'll definitely be back to Viareggio on a dry day. Sadly we'll be gone by February when it holds its four-week carnival (hence the floats mentioned earlier). It's described in one of guidebooks as second only to Venice's Mardi Gras. Not that I know what that's like.

N.B. At some point I'll be getting photos up on here, though it'll probably have to wait till I've got our internet dongle to play ball; I've not mastered the technology to get images from my phone to my e-mail account. Don't go sitting by your computers though, the camera on my phone is particularly shitty.