Yesterday was beach day. It was amazing, plain and simple. Amanda Jones called and woke me up at 10:30 to let me know that we were meeting at 11:00, not noon as originally planned. I got up, made a couple sandwiches (one salami and cheese, one Nutella and banana), packed my backpack, threw on my board shorts, a t-shirt, and tennis shoes, and headed downstairs to meet Anne, Priya, Elaine, and the Amandas. The plan was to catch the H-Bus to Termini, the train station, meet up with Magown, and buy tickets for the 11:49 train out to the beach at Sperlonga, about eighty minutes outside of Rome. The bus was late, though, so we didn’t get to Termini until 11:45 or so. Priya and Elaine had Eurail passes, so they ran to catch the train while the rest of us lined up at the self-service machines. Deciding not to take our chances, we bought tickets for the 12:49 train and gave ourselves an hour to relax. Then, Amanda Longoria got a phone call from Elaine saying that she had forgotten her Eurail pass – she was coming back to meet us, leaving Priya by herself.
After an hour of relaxation and a cheap vending machine cappuccino (surprisingly good), we hopped on the train and found a relatively empty car so that we could all sit together. I read and ate one of my sandwiches, and I think everyone else slept. We got off the train at Sperlonga at about 2:15, just in time to meet up with Priya and watch the bus to the beach pull away from the curb. We asked the owner of the adjacent convenience store when the next one was coming: two hours. We decided to walk and asked how far away it was: eleven kilometers. It was already maybe eighty-five degrees and we all had bags, so that was out. Fortunately, two nice Italian gentlemen with two station wagons offered to drive us out there for twenty euros per car.
I didn’t think it was the best idea, for obvious reasons, but I got outvoted due to our sheer lack of options. Amanda Jones, Elaine and I got in the first car, them in the back, me riding shotgun. Elaine mentioned later that she wasn’t worried – if he had tried anything, it would have been three on one, and they could have restrained him from behind while I “punched him or something,” she said. Not sure how well that would have worked out, but despite my mental refrain of “This is a bad idea, this is a bad idea, this is a bad idea,” it turned out that we didn’t need this contingency plan, after all. We pulled up at the beach, and the driver gave me his business card as we were getting out of the car – it was an eighth of a sheet of notebook paper with his handwritten phone number and his first name. “Call me if you need ride back,” he said. “Can do,” I said, and smiled. The other car pulled up right behind us, the four of them got out, we shelled over forty euros, and they drove away. We were there.
We hadn’t been walking along the shoreline for two minutes before we heard, “Hey, guys!” We looked over. The other half of our group—Harrison, Dhananjay, Andrew, Ashley, Angela, Sherry, Megan, and Andrew’s friend Abby—were sprawled out in the shade of several umbrellas on rental chairs. Professor Arya had recommended Sperlonga as the best beach within a three hour radius, so I guess running into them wasn’t as big as a coincidence as it seemed originally. We dropped our bags off, slathered on some sunscreen, and headed out into the water.
Most, if not all, of my life’s beach experiences are from the Texas coast – Galveston, Corpus Christi, and the like. The Mediterranean Sea is nothing like the Gulf of Mexico. The water was cool, almost cold, clean, and startlingly clear; about thirty meters out, with the water up to my neck, I could look down and count my toes. It was obviously salty, but I had forgotten how buoyant salt water is. I could float just by lifting up my legs into a sitting position and leaning back. There were very few waves, none powerful enough to ride into the shore or body surf on. It was very peaceful – we found a sandbar about fifty meters out and chilled there, water up to our shoulders, for about half an hour or so. We alternated back and forth between sunning and swimming for the next few hours. I made some good progress in a book of essays by E.B. White, of Charlotte’s Web fame, spooning away at gelato (what else?) before it got the chance to melt. Magown bought a volleyball from one of the vendors on the boardwalk, so we hit that around in the water for a while.
Overall, it was very chill, very relaxing, the perfect way to start off the last week. The journey back wasn’t nearly as difficult as the one over, no hitches or missed buses/trains to speak of. Being in the sun that long sucked a lot of energy out of me, but I still had my second five-page paper to write when we got home at about 9:00. It was 9:45 by the time I had eaten dinner and showered, so I power-wrote (picture power-walking, except in writing form) with the aid of some coffee until about 2:30 and hit the sack. Good day.
Birthday countdown - 4 days, 15 hours, 23 minutes.
P.S. George Carlin died. That sucks.
P.P.S. What's this I hear about a tomato famine?
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