Il cane e la spiaggia

Above: the gardens on campus

Below: our new friend Benny

Yes, I realize I haven't written in two days... and trust me the outcries from my thousands of dedicated readers have been heard. My grandmother needs more updates. So I'll try to cover the more exciting portions of the past two days, starting with Thursday:

I have an obnoxiously long break between classes on Thursdays, so a few friends and I decided to grab sandwiches and stroll through the campus gardens. They're really cool. Definitely have that Secret Garden feel to them, only none of us are learning how to walk for the first time. Nor was there a fire in India... (I don't know about that last part. I just remember at the beginning of that movie there was a fire, and an elephant was involved). Anyway, while we were there, we met our new friend Benny. Benny's a dog. A rather shy dog at that... he'd only follow us further into the garden if we left a trail of little scraps of bread from our sandwiches. It wasn't until we'd been in the gardens for 20 minutes that we realized Benny was a girl. At which point we decided to start spelling her name as such: Benni. The "i" makes it way more feminine. Oh, and when we asked her where the Jets were, she said she'd left them at home.

Above: gorgeous beach

Below: gorgeous people

Friday:

Yesterday we went to Viareggio, one of the most beautiful beaches I've ever been to. In addition to all the beautiful things you look for in a beach, there were mountains. A huge mountain range along the coast with snow at the peaks. If you were in the water and turned around to take in the coast, it was stunning. We stayed there for the whole day, and took pictures at sunset. We even played soccer in the sand, and I may or may not have made Jamie eat sand. Hip checks are legal in soccer, right? I also figure it was OK because we were playing next to a pirate flag. Argh matey! I'm a pirate and I ain't be playin' by none o' yer rules land-lubber! Or something...

Also, I think I've decided that after I graduate, I want to live somewhere where there's a beach. I want to be able to go to the beach on a regular basis and not have to drive hours and hours to get there. It'd be even better if I could wake up and walk out my back door ONTO the beach. Maybe I wont wait until retirement to open up my restaurant/lifestyle store. I'll just open a café in Miami and make amazing coffee and sell food, books, art, furniture, and kitchenwares. It'll be an emporium. An awesome emporium. I don't even know the technical definition of emporium, but I think that's what I want. We'll also have yoga 3 times a week.

*If you want to see more pictures of the beach, I'm posting them to Facebook. I have some amazing ones of the ocean/sunset. Too many to post here though.

Oh, and I spoke to the little Nonna running the beach rental place (we had to pay 5 euro for our chairs on the beach). She understood me completely. I understood her completely. Go team.

Ciao Bella!

Matteo "Peg-leg" Yazge