Beaches

So looking back I figured I'd do a brief explanation of each beach we ended up visiting during the five day stay in Lecce.

1st beach- Porto Cesaro. This first one was standard fun in the sun. Nice clear warm water pretty busy and was my first look at the beaches the heel of Italy had to offer. Interesting thing is, there was nearly all families and not many people our age. This didn't really matter cause we spent most of the time getting our sun on but there was a nice castle in the distance.

2nd beach- Torre Vado. This beach was the very southern tip of the heel. It was a lot like the first one, bit nicer, a bit less crowded, and my favorite thing about it was in the water, very far out, there would be a patch of very shallow water. Basically if you walk out far enough the water all of a sudden just gets shallower. Pretty cool stuff and you can see people just really far out juggling soccer balls and having a good time.

3rd beach-Otranto. We started out by visiting the village of Otranto which had a lot of very cool sights and fit the image of all of the paintings of Italy and Greece you see in the art galleries. The beach itself wasn't named Otranto but it was such a journey to get there and it was so secluded I really don't know if it had a name. By far the nicest beach out of them all it really felt like we were in our own little paradise. The water was incredibly clean and clear, there were very tropical umbrellas that set the mood, and it was on the opposite side of the heel from all the other beaches we went to. Definitely one for the memory books

4th beach- Gallipoli. At first glance we were shocked at how dirty and un-beautiful these beaches were. Out of all of them this one had the largest and youngest crowd, but we couldn't figure out why. There were rocks all over even in the water and the sand was littered with trash (keep in mind this is all relative to the last beach). Anyways we decided to stay and I'm glad we did. This beach had THE best waves out of any beach I've been to in Europe. This was helped partly by the wind but Nicola and I spent a large section of our time body surfing and we took breaks to all play cards. Worth a visit for sure.

so yah as a whole a great experience. I'll definitely be missing Italy and all it had to offer. Funny enough when I met up with Nicola and Michela's friends none of them spoke English. We had to talk through other means like singing and dancing but it was quite the experience having absolutely no understanding of each other. The last night I got an amazing home cooked dinner from Michela and we got to explore her home city. I'm kind of jealous of the situation she has. She lives on a beach with an amazing view. And at summer nights all of her friends and nearly everyone goes to this strip along the beach of bars to hang out. It's essentially the place to be and you always see your friends there. Never really had that in CV where we have to call up everyone if you want to hang out and go over to their house. I'd love to be able to just go down to an area and be surprised by who's there and have the consistency of just knowing people will be there. Anyways I digress, I've been in London for two days now and I love it as well. Could definitely see myself living here not only because of the language (which is nice haha) but because there is always something going on. Greg, the friend I'm staying with who I met in Cannes, made a good point though. With all of the things going on it's almost too much. There's a beer festival right after I leave, and in a small town you could confidently go there and see all of your friends. but because there are a million other festivals going on it's basically not as special as it could be.

Film is also huge here which is a great thing. We had coffee and brainstormed at this lounge below a theater where you could tell there was just an artsy vibe. There were short films playing on repeat and most people were sitting around laptops discussing business or creative aspects of their own projects. I'll write more about London later but sadly my trip is coming to an end. Hasn't really hit me yet and probably won't till about week into me being back but this has easily been a trip of a lifetime. Anyways we're shooting the short today and the rest of the week (which will be mixed in with activities as well around the city). Last night for example we all went out for drinks. Funny thing with London is you don't by drinks you buy rounds. But ok ok I gotta go do some filming. You'll hear from me soon. Cheers.