After Matt returned from Ukraine, we drove 3 hours south to the border of Basilicata and Calabria, at the “instep” of Italy’s boot, on the Ionian Sea.  We LOVE this sea– it is so clean, clear, and calm, and the area offers vast stretches of free, natural, accessible beach.  We remembered how to be “beach” people; just swimming and sitting.  We thought about doing something else, but it was just too hot out (there was a heat wave), so we just hung at the beach.  Turns out, once we got our groove, it was very nice to just relax, swim, eat, and chill together.

We always run into timing issues and almost always do things at opposite time from Italians: They do beach in the morning, go home in the afternoon, go back to the beach around 4/5pm, eat gelato/drink apertivo in the late afternoon, eat dinner around 8:30pm or later, then stay up late.  We chill in the morning, beach in the afternoon when everyone clears out (not a terrible thing, actually), go home to clean up and eat dinner…. NOPE!… we then wait a LONG time until restaurants open again for dinner, eat earlier (at 7:30pm or even later) than anyone else, then go home and go to bed!  Oh well!  We still had fun and enjoyed the sea, the food, the view from our apartment, the chill Calabria small-beach-town vibes, and the relaxing time together.