A couple of hours on an Italian beach

Ciao amici!

How are you? I’m sitting under an umbrella, on a Salento beach. We are in Puglia to see Luca’s family in Taranto and took a break to spend two early-morning hours at the beach. I’ll tell you everything I see.

In front of me, two couples are bathing, and chatting continuously. One of them has a loud voice so you can detect what he’s saying: something about uncivilized people not showering - didn’t catch where and why.

Next to me an elegant woman - a black swimsuit, bracelets, earrings, and a beautiful hair clip - is sunbathing but also looking around. The husband is not at her level - I don't like men in speedos - he is sunbathing as well with music in his earphones.

A couple just passed by, she was drinking an orangy refreshment, it made me thirsty.

I love to see the fringes of our umbrella swinging to the breeze. But I also wonder why the person occupying the umbrella behind us decided his or her flip-flops couldn’t go on the sand:

I decided to survey the bathing suits: pink and florals are all the rage, but a leopard print and a flashy blue just passed by, and they're not the first. The classic black is omnipresent. Ninety percent are two pieces.

I take a break to breathe in the pure, aromatic air perfumed by the Macchia Mediterranea.

A mom is entertaining her - totally naked - running-around toddler. She shouts a lot. She's very loud. She’s very thin. Next to her, a chubby mom is helping her daughter build a sand castle. In a silently, so much more discrete tone. I’ve always thought that part of the reason some people are overly thin is because they invade the space around them, while the chubbier ones - including me in some of my life phases - are invaded so they try to conquer the space through the volume of their bodies. I don’t think either is healthy, but who's sane these days?

A really, really tanned man just passed by, how can he already be that dark?

A group of children is intent on the realization of what promises to be a great engineering construction. A young man is excavating here and there, helping them. Very cute.

A beach vendor passes by, he’s the tenth, but his merchandise is different: kites.

There’s a blessed moment of silence.

The elegant lady’s two kids come asking for water and where the mom is, the Speedo-husband answers that she went home, to clean the plates. I’m sure it’s a joke, but tacky - I knew it, not at her level. I can see why the wife is spending all her time chatting with a friend, under another family's umbrella.

The lifeguard in his red t-shirt is walking up and down the shore, surveying the water. He is so young and so thin… and still so scrupulous, rare on Italian beaches.

A helicopter intrudes the perfectly blue sky, everyone looks, but indifferently.

A guy on a canoa breaks in two the panorama.

I decide it’s time to refresh and have a mindful moment, so I walk to the seaside and immerse my body for half - I’m not sure I want to bathe today. I close my eyes and survey sensations: the cold that slowly becomes warmth, the seaweed that tickles my feet, the massage of the waves... I’m about to surrender, I might decide to bathe. A bunch of kids runs into the water splashing everywhere. I'm bathed!