The town was fairly small, but we had to walk about ten blocks from the train station to the beach. The beach is divided somehow, I'm not sure how it works. Rather than just going to the beach and picking a spot you have to choose an entrance, pay, then go and sit in your section. Every 200 feet or so there is another entrance. I don't know if each section is owned by a hotel or restaurant or what, but each section of the beach has lines of umbrellas and beach chairs that you have to pay for. Kellin, Dan, Lara, Sarah, and I decided to huddle around one umbrella which came with two chairs. We had to pay for an additional folding chair.
It was probably after 10:00 by the time we were all settled and it was already getting pretty hot on the Tyrrhenian Sea. Or was it the Ligurian Sea? Let's just call it the Mediterranian Sea. I think the forecast was for 95 degree weather. We went out to the water, which felt cool at first but ended up being really nice. We, along with many other people, kept getting whistled at by the lifeguards, but we didn't know their rules or what they were talking about. We went back to our chairs after a while, and by this time the sand was extremely hot. It really hurt and we cried a lot.
The next time we went into the water we went out about chest deep and swam for a while. We got whistled at again but we couldn't come back in. Apparently there were very strong undercurrents. That's what all the red flags meant, but I didn't know that or even notice them. Kellin got back in towards the beach but Sarah and I were out farther and were struggling. It was kind of scary, but I was able to make it in slowly. Sarah was moving out farther however, and was having a really hard time. We were both getting pretty tired. I went back out to where she was and tried to help. I could barely get myself in, let alone both of us. At first she tried to hang on to me, but that wasn't working because I couldn't swim with both of us together. Then I tried to position myself behind her and every time a wave came, sucking the water back out to sea and making it slightly shallower for a few seconds, I tried to plant my foot and push her forward with the wave. We were both kind of freaking out and I was thinking that maybe I should start waving my arms for help. But my pushing her ahead of each wave seemed to help and eventually we made it back. We were exhausted and quite scared. That's when we found out about the undertow, after we were already out in it. Thanks lifeguards.
After all that we had lunch at a restaurant on the beach and swam a little more (in the shallower area). I was fried. After we got home I saw just how burnt I was. Very. I am sitting in front of a fan, completely red, writing this.
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