Hols Day 3

A good night and now chance to find out what the apartment had to offer.
In a purely residential area, it was on the top third level of a standard boring block of flats. In terms I hate, would call it working class, seemingly all the other units occupied by local families who, while very friendly, were a challenge to communicate properly with, as only one person we came into contact with spoke English (yes, I'm being the arrogant Englishman!)

Apartment on two levels with two double bedrooms, one single, two complete bathrooms, large sitting room with TV and well equipped kitchen with dining table. All very clean. Enough room for six people. While it had air-conditioning, it didn't have a balcony. In front of the block there is large grass area and BBQ, but not all that attractive to sit on in the evening with a glass of wine. Cost for the apartment including everything was €100 night.

After breakfast, strolled the 5 minutes walk into the centre of the medieval town and walked around the streets. It's actually more a village and eventually decided to have a light lunch which turned out to be more than we wanted.

 We were to come to realise the place didn't really have the charm and character we had expected  -sitting outside a street cafe drinking coffee or wine and watching the locals go about their normal daily business. The place was just one big 'food court' with a variety of restaurants offering full meals at upper end prices.  We saw no real typical small and cheap trattoria, osteria or birraria. There was barely a normal shop, certainly no supermarket or shops selling ordinary everyday items. The entire place was set up for day tourists who seemingly outnumbered the locals 100:1. Wikipedia refers to it as a hamlet with a population of around 150 inhabitants, yet it's swarming with people.

In the late afternoon took a 15km drive to the nearest 'big' town on the coast, Cecina and Marina di Bibbona which clearly were set up for beach & family tourists. Went to a German owned Penny supermarket & got in provisions to cook an evening meal at home, something we did for the remainder of the holiday, apart from the last night. Supermarkets generally turned out to be very good.