Italians have some great melanin in their genes.

These people are tan. Really tan.

In an effort to step up my pale game, I found myself on the beaches of Viareggio Saturday. About an hour away, a group of ten of us managed to figure out the bus system and make our way to the coast without any problem, a huge success since we are all still struggling with the language barrier here.

A 16 euro roundtrip ticket later, we found ourselves at the beautiful beach club Nettuno. We quickly forgot our plans of the free beach and forked over another 3 euro each to enjoy the club’s soft sand (a miracle amongst the rocky beaches of Europe), beach chairs, pool and, of course, the bar.

Our chosen spot was picturesque to say the least, with giant mountains kissing the coast to create a perfect cape. We spent the day attempting to get our Italian tan on, which seemed to be a success judging by the pictures from later that night, and hanging out on the sandbar, which was perfect for my non-swimming self.

After hours of gabbing and sipping sweet drinks, we made time for window shopping on the water. Not that my budget has any room for Gucci, but if it did I was in luck; a store was right at the entrance of the club.

Europeans know how to beach, that’s for sure.

Some notes:

• Vendors roam the beach, and will harass you for a solid five minutes before they understand that, even though you said it 100 times, you really don’t want to buy a pair of sunglasses. One, knowing we were American, told he would give us a “shakalaka boom boom Lady Gaga price” for a pair of fake RayBans. Tempting, but a no-go.
• People actually swim in the water. Like swim, swim. It’s weird. I’ll stick to my wading.
• I haven’t been to a nude beach, but I guess if you’re feeling it you can just strip wherever?
• I saw this in Cinque Terre too, but public beaches are very, very small and not so nice. So it is totally worth it to hand over a few more euros for a nice area, a chair and that lovely person who watches your bag for you.