Let me make something clear: we are not beach people. The day started early with a hike from Levanto to Monterosso. The plan was to keep going all the way to Manarola, as the last kilometre to Riomagore is closed and would have transformed a 10-minute walk into a 2-hour hike. In any case, we arrived in Monterosso for lunch after a beautiful 2.5-hour hike and decided the weather was too good to continue what, by now, was a well-known hike. Instead, we decided to pack it in and go for a swim. That’s when we discovered we are not beach people.
For one thing, beach people get up in the morning and reserve their chairs at one of the many establishments that will take money and lease you a long chair and parasol that’s already conveniently set up for you. As we did not do this, we ended up doing the walk of shame from one establishment to the next, being told they were full (even when chairs were clearly unoccupied!). More on that later. We ended up at one of the public beach areas (a small stony spot between two resorts, stuffed with people). Swimming in the ocean is excellent, but getting sand everywhere because, even with our best effort and towel arrangement, you’re still sitting in the damn thing. Any case, 1.5 hours later and about three swims each, we called it a day, changed and went to drown our sorrows at the local enoteca (wine bar for the non-Italian). Our favourite place was closed (apparently, they take Tuesday off with no regard for the distraught tourist in need of a lemon spritz). Found our backup Enoteca a little further in the village after two tries (and discovered the local dive bar in the process). In any case, the food was better than our usual spot, but no lemon spritz, just the regular kind, an Aperol spritz. Our sorrows thoroughly drowned, we had dinner at our favourite restaurant here (which has the decency of closing on Wednesday, when we’re not there).
Now, the promised tangent on the unused sun chairs on the beach. In Monterosso, several fine establishments will take your money and lease you a chair on the beach for the day. The thing is, if you only want the chair for a couple of hours because you’re planning to do other things than trying to catch skin cancer (a.k.a. Sunbathing) and swim in the ocean, you’ve still rented it for the day. There’s also no way for you to signal that you’re done and don’t plan to come back. So your poor chair, who would, I’m sure, love nothing more than having a different behind sitting on it, cannot get the opportunity, as, once all chairs are rented for the day, no more chairs are available (even if you can clearly see empty chairs that are obviously unused). The nice chair-renting person will refuse to take your money and, in essence, double-rent the chair, in case the original tenant decides they were in fact not done with it and comes back.
This whole chair business ended with us giving our money to the local wine bar instead of the regional chair renter. I guess the wine maker wins in the end.
