Spend The Day At An Italian Beach Club
Visiting the beach in the south of Italy, at least outside of Napoli where we live, is very different from how I grew up going to the beach in Southwest Florida. The idea of a beach club, or lido, was completely foreign to me until we came to Italy. Growing up going to Sanibel Island in Floriday for spring break every year, we would just grab our beach chairs and toys and walk to a spot on the beach to set up for the day. No reservations, no payment, no real planning necesary. Here, it is a bit harder to do something as simple as that because “free beaches” are few and far between and the ones that do exist are usually not as well maintained and fill up very quickly, especially on the weekend.
If you want to spend the day at the beach, the easiest way to do that is to visit one of the lidi, or beach clubs. You can rent sun beds and umbrellas for the day and will have access to amenities like toilets, snack bars, restaurants, showers, waters toys, playgrounds, etc depending on the beach club.
We have lived in Italy for 3 years, but this is the first summer we have really utilized the beach clubs because 1) my son was very scared of the sound of the waves the past two summers and 2) we had a favorite free beach we would go to that is tucked away in a little cove but the closest parking lot is closed this year and it is inconvenient to get to now.
Last Saturday, we spent the day at Turistico Beach Club in Bacoli. This summer, parking has been a bit of a mess in Bacoli along the Miliscola beach because the major parking lots have all been closed, but you can park here and walk or park here and take the shuttle to the different beach clubs. If you plan to go to one of the beach clubs on the weekend, you need to make a reservation ahead of time. You can choose you spot on the beach and pay ahead of time. Then when you arrive, you just tell the check-in desk that you reserved online and show them your chair number and one of the attendants will walk you to your chairs and set the umbrella up for you.
We arrived around 10am and had booked 2 sun beds in the first row. It cost €50 for the day for 2 beds and an umbrella. You can also book a fancier bed, a private pagoda, a bed without an umbrella, etc. The first row is my preferred location since it is closest to the water and my son can easily run back and forth from the chairs to the surf. We took beach toys as well as rafts and inner tubes. We played for about and hour and a half before my partner went to get our first round of drinks and snacks. We also bought granite, similar to what we might call Italian ice or a slushy in the States, off a vendor on the beach.
You will see countless vendors on the beach, selling everything from clothes to jewelry to beach toys to snacks like granita and fresh coconuts. People will even come by offering massages or hair braiding. You can just politely say “no, grazie” and they will leave you alone.
The restaurant at Turistico was fantastic. We walked up for lunch around 1pm. We didn’t make a reservation but they were still able to seat us with no problem. My son had pasta pomodoro, which is just penne pasta with tomato sauce and my partner and I split alici fritte, or fried anchovies, and two pastas: spaghetti ai frutti di mare (spaghetti with seafood like clams and mussels) and mezzi paccheri with fish (I can’t remember which kind). We of course ended the meal with an espresso and then grabbed a gelato from the bar before heading back to the beach.
We spend the rest of the afternoon swimming, digging in the sand, and swimming before packing up to head home. We’ll be trying a different lido next weekend!
