This week’s travel dream: Italy’s Gulf of Poets

“Look around,” said one Milanese. “This is how you do nothing in a civilized way.”

“There are many perfect beach days on the Italian Riviera,” said Devin Friedman in Travel + Leisure. You might not find such perfection on your first try—as my wife and I found out when we arrived with our two young children on Italy’s northwestern coast and drove to our rental villa perched about 6,000 steep steps above a picturesque beachside town. But though Lerici proved impractical for our family, it sits on a quiet inlet, known as the Gulf of Poets, that allowed us to pick a slightly different beach experience each day. At every stop we were surrounded by a population dedicated to “the very pursuit” we hoped to learn: essentially, how to “suck all the marrow out of life.”

The tiny hamlet of Fiascherino offered lesson one. Its beach, tucked into a pretty cove, is favored by families from Milan and Parma, whom we mingled with at the huge seawater pool and over a marvelous buffet lunch in the open-air dining area. “Look around,” one Milanese told me. “This is how you do nothing in a civilized way.” We easily could have spent a month in nearby Tellaro, the Gulf of Poets’ easternmost town. You park above it and descend ultra-narrow streets to “a piazza that empties into the sea.” Groceries or a cold beer are close at hand, and if you wade into the water, a fisherman might be launching a boat beside you. Or teenagers might be “floating out on their backs in the crisp, mineral-blue sea, this Renaissance town as their backdrop.”

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