Adriatic Sea

Robbie got home from work about an hour early one day and as soon as he walked in the door said "let's go do something." It was late afternoon and we couldn't go too far, so we decided to try to find some of the Adriatic Sea beaches nearby. We mostly just followed signs  to "lidi" (beaches) along the road and ended up near a town called Comacchio.  I had read about Comacchio in one of my Italy tour books--they called it a "little Venice" because the town is situated on a bunch of canals.  The town is apparently famous for its eels. Eel fishing season is October to December and apparently during this time you can watch the fisherman catch eels in big square nets.  We saw some of the boats with the nets, but nobody was fishing yet.  Robbie gets creeped out by eels, but I think it would be fun to go back and watch sometime. 

We found the beach pretty quickly.

Nuns on the beach

Though the air was chilly, the water was actally pretty nice. But we didn't bring swimsuits or anything to go swimming. I've heard to be careful about swimming in some of these beaches since the very polluted Po river dumps into this part of the Adriatic. The water can be dirty and contaminated with bacteria and  other pollutants from the rivers. We all stuck out feet in and splashed around a little bit.

Michael loved being in the water, but he got so mad at me for not letting him plop down and splash around.  He threw a couple very uncharacteristic fits, and I'm pretty sure he thought I was the worst mommy ever.  But it was while he was happy!

We hung out for an hour or so, then headed back home.  We were starving and we saw a McDonald's on the way. We try not to go there (I mean, we're in Italy), but we caved.  First we made the mistake of trying to go through the drive through when we don't speak much Italian.  That failed pretty quickly, so we went inside. Robbie tried to order a hamburger and ended up with chicken nuggets.  We thought it was funny that the two Americans couldn't even manage to order food right at McDonalds. 

We got home in time to give Michael a bath before bedtime.  It was a fun, quick little trip and I'm excited to go back and explore the fish markets, canals, and churches in Comacchio when we get the chance.