We went to visit Ga. and his fiance Ka.. He's recovering from the heart attack he's had and we'd been talking about visiting for a while. We have some busy weekends in the near future so we decided to do it now rather than wait, and planned a short trip to the seaside. I woke up around 8:00am, made myself a sandwich with my wife's leftovers from yesterday's dinner (lemon sole "alla mugnaia"; made for a weird sandwich), put my bathing suit on underneath; then we took the train to the capital at 9:30am. It was an uneventful ride, which I spent mostly reading - I finished a book ("Il barone rampante" by Calvino) and started another ("The moustache" by Emmanuel Carrere). Ga. and Ka. were waiting for us at the train station. He lost weight and looked good despite what he's been through - incredible what a few weeks without working can do for you. We took a very packed tram to the other train station and waited for the local train that would take us to the seaside town we were headed for. It was a short ride, about 12 kms, in some old carriages that probably date back to the 70s. It was a sunny day and the sky was entirely clear of clouds, which hasn't happened for a very long time. They have better weather up there, which I have become very jealous of.
It was lunchtime by now and we set out to find a place to eat, which was not easy as the town was quite packed with visitors. Right next to the train station there is a long quay full of fish restaurants, as the locality is renowned for having "the best fish" (an exaggeration). We walked all the way to the end of the quay, past people eating mostly fried fish, until we found a restaurant that would have room for us. They had to buzz us in, which was strange; the restaurant was up a flight of stairs and was one of those places with large windows facing the harbour and the sea - you could see sailboats and jetskis going around. The patrons were unusually well-dressed irish ladies and a stereotypically russian family - a grim-faced man with a botoxed wife sporting what was surely an extremely expensive watch, and their teenaged kids. We ordered some starters and a couple of mains that we all shared (and a surprisingly good bottle of Pinot Grigio). I admit that the fish was good and well-cooked, but I was a bit miffed by the menu on the way in. Almost every restaurant in the country, this one included, has the same menu with extremely small variations. If you go to a fish restaurant you can be sure that you will find: fish and chips (at a restaurant! just go to a chippie for fuck's sake); monkfish curry; pan-fried sea bass. Even fish restaurants have to offer meat options (steak and chicken, usually), as a lot of people don't like fish despite living on an island. I ordered steamed halibut with lentils because it was at least a little different. Ga. insisted on paying and after some back and forth I consented; it's always awkward to deal with the bill.
After we left the restaurant we walked back along the quay and went for ice-cream as Ga. had a craving for it - he's on a calorie budget and had saved himself during lunch. I skipped the ice-cream, not really because of the calories but because I find average quality ice-cream no longer worth it. Ka. has started a lucrative job in the capital (it is the whole reason they moved there) and she was telling me of all the perks they keep offering her - not because she was bragging, but because she found the lengths they go to to ingratiate her funny. They really seem to be fawning over her. It is sometimes hard to follow her, partly because she jumps into a topic out of the blue, partly because she is greek and she learned italian by ear, sometimes with humorous consequences (more on this below). We headed up a steep road and halfway through it we arrived at the entrance to the small beach. A steep and somewhat perilous flight of concrete stairs takes you down to the pebbles beach. There were quite a few people but it was not packed and we didn't have trouble finding a spot for our towels. I stripped off and went for a swim - the first and probably the last one of the season, at least in this country. My wife followed me but quickly retreated after feeling the water with her feet - it was too cold for her, she said. I thought the water temperature was actually fine and had very little trouble getting in, unlike some other times in the past; but we did see a number of people trying to get in and retreat in defeat. I swam up and down the beach froggy-style (or more like a dog, really) trying to keep my hair above the water - I was worried it wasn't warm enough to dry it off. I used to be a decent swimmer as a kid but it has been so long, I have forgotten all the techniques and no longer have the necessary coordination (I end up swallowing buckets of seawater every time). Unfortunately there is no public pool where we live (shockingly), so I can't practice. The water was murky despite the pebbles and the seabed was carpeted with invisible seaweed - it was a strange feeling to wade through it. Once tired I got out and spent some time drying in the sun; a chill wind started to blow and I had to put my t-shirt on. We spent some time chatting about this and that laying on our towels until it was time to leave. My wife held up a towel for me to get changed behind but she nearly dropped it a couple of times, which made us laugh.
We left the beach and climbed back up the steep concrete stairs - Ga. got a bit winded on the way up, so we stopped for a couple of minutes so he could catch his breath. He has a long rehabilitation in front of him, but he's been walking a lot already, which is good. It was around 4:30pm and was starting to get cold already. We headed back into town looking for a drink: in the first pub we visited, people were loudly singing Happy Birthday so we left immediately; the next one had room upstairs but the first thing we noticed was a stream of 13-14 yrs olds coming in and we decided to leave as well (but not before blending in with the patrons to use the toilets). We ended up in the beer garden of the pub that sits right behind the train station, which was quite full; but we managed to get ourselves a barrel to rest our drinks on, at least. We took the train back at 5:45pm and along the ride Ka. entertained us with the mistakes she makes when she speaks italian. When an italian colleague visited she forced him to only speak italian with her; then she proceeded to call her water bottle "boscaccia" instead of "borraccia" for a whole day; and others of the sort. We parted ways at the tram stop and my wife and I went back to the train station. We got there on time and boarded the train. The ride was a bit unpleasant, especially taxing for my wife: we were in the quiet carriage but many people were talking loudly, howling and roaring and chatting up the strangers sitting next to them. She wrapped herself in her noise-cancelling headphones and I tried to read a little. Eventually the carriage got a little quieter as people started getting off. I joked with her to calm her down a little and she called me silly. We got back at the scheduled time, around 9:40pm.
We walked home from the train station, walking through a road that is buzzing with pubs and bars; we noticed that the place where they used to make italian streetfood has reopened, but is now another chipper. As we got home my wife jumped into the shower and I removed all the beach pebbles from my shoes. We smoked a joint and heated up our dinner, which my wife had prepared yesterday in view of our trip - "pizza di patate", basically a potato casserole with scamorza and mortadella. It was exceptionally good and I had to exercise all my restraint in order not to finish it all in one go. We finished watching a movie we had started the day before, "The Holdovers" (2023). It was a cute movie with strong 90s vibes - it could have been the type of movie we used to watch on TV on lazy saturday afternoons when we were kids. The joint made us sleepy so I convinced my wife to move to the bed and fall asleep watching the Simpsons, which in the context felt like a little treat. It's exactly what we did. We woke up at 5am, I washed the dishes and went back to bed. We curled up together and fell asleep again.