Circeo

So, you both weren't married before to other people?
- Misunderstanding that arose with our dinner companions
after Marco said this trip was like a "second honeymoon"

Tah-tunn! We're back! Did you miss us? Perhaps a better (read: more likely) question is: did you even realize we were gone?

Well, we were gone. Gone to Circeo. Circeo is a beach area about 80 km south of Rome. Think of it as Muskoka, except with beaches and villas. We stayed here with our molto simpatici hosts, Barbara and Dario.




As you can see, we were roughing it. :-) After the non-stop touring of Rome, our feet needed a rest. We spent the past three days relaxing on the beach in front of the Mediterranean Sea. As we ate panini on the beach, this is what we were looking at:

Don't hate us too much. If it makes you feel any better back in Canada, the weather wasn't all sunshine and lollipops. It was actually cold and kind of rainy for a big part of the time... the time when we weren't sunning ourselves under our reserved umbrella, that is.

I created a minor beach sensation because I was so white. People could just not believe that someone could be so devoid of pigment. To be fair, it was true: I was by far the whitest person around for miles. I was practically translucent. Everyone else had serious tans and mini-bikinis. I was wearing a hat, a long-sleeved shirt and 40 sunscreen over my entire body. I actually almost matched the white plastic beach chair, which was rather dispiriting. (Despite all these precautions, I still managed to get a bit of sun).

Here is the aerial view of the beach (beach is at far middle right).

Barbara keeps beautiful gardens at her villa.



The beach house also had a terrace. This is a photo of our bedroom door leading to the terrace.

To the left of the above door is a circular iron staircase leading to the roof where you can look at this:

This is the view from our bedroom window:

Needless to say, we had a great time. Our hosts were marvellous, we ate amazing food and we got to relax.

One night, we went to an Italian movie (actually a French movie but overdubbed in Italian), "Cash":

Cash – Bande Annonce
by TFMDistribution

Unfortunately, I understood very little about what went on - apparently, it was kind of like an "Oceans 11" in Italian. The scheming and counter-scheming were too complex to just get "get the idea" from the pictures. On an interesting note, the theatre we saw the film in was built by Mussolini.

Tomorrow we are off to the mythical Campotosto, home village of Marco's family. We may again be out of radio contact, but I am devising a schemetastic way to post, nonetheless. (Emma, this scheme might involve you, ever so slightly...)