New Banner

Did you notice the new banner? It has a sort of professional quality to it. Meglio cambiare, no? Sorry inside joke!!! Thanks for the help Shelley at Really Rome You can tell from her blog and site that she’s a professional at this sort of thing.
This photo is the sunset from the beach Saturday night. I would have stayed later but it’s at this time that mosquitoes come out in force.
This weekend I spent most of my waking hours at Penna Grossa or Torre Gauceto. I should explain in case I confuse all of you. I use both names but I should just use one or the other. Torre Gauceto is the large national park in which the beach, Penna Grossa, is located. So Penna Grossa is the just the physical beach and everything else is Torre Guaceto. This is important because there is good and bad news in the park this year. The good news is someone of dubious intentions is no longer collecting the money you pay to park to go to Penna Grossa. You park in a big level dirt parking lot and “someone” collected 1 euro from you when you leave. That’s 1 euro per car, which is bargain, but it was be collected “in nero”. No taxes and no benefit to the park, which really bothered me. This year the park has taken over duties of collecting for parking that makes me feel much better about paying. It’s a good thing I feel better about it because the park raised the rate from 1 euro to 2.50 per car! And they moved the parking lot area to a place that’s about 0.5 km from the sea. They have in turn a bus that takes you from the parking lot to the beach but it’s sooooo slow and dirty (I have yet to ride in it as I see it as a waste). I walk to the beach faster than that stupid bus because it sits and waits until it’s close to full before leaving. I see a lot of benefits for this new parking scheme and I hope I’m right about these reasons.
1. Less people at “my beach” because it’s more expensive.
2. Less people because it’s more of pain to get to. The bus is slow like I said and I also don’t think it’s going to be reliable over the summer.
3. The people that do come will tend to carpool to pay less, which is good for everyone.
4. The park will have money to complete their projects. They already have put up a great fence that keeps people off the sand dunes and a boardwalk area so disabled people can reach the beach area. There are a couple of strange buildings they should demolish, as they are only used by graffiti artists at this point.
Other news is Sunday the sign below was on my building. They post these signs around towns in Italy. It seems Antonio Bonatesta in my building died this weekend. I don’t think I ever met this person. I don’t know my neighbors very well. They all seem to be very old couples that keep to them selves. I know I keep different hours than them so I try not to make much noise. These signs are put up all over town when someone dies and in some cases people put them up on anniversaries of the death of someone. It may seem strange to us Americans but Italians are much more about family and that includes in death. Signs like this remind all of us to think about our own family, which reminds me I haven’t called my Nonna in a while to see how she’s doing. Ciao