Sun and Seafood

Gabby, Dara and I took a day trip to Anzio today, which was about an hour train ride from Rome. It is a small, adorable beach/port town and the weather was absolutely beautiful. Not a cloud in the sky and it was probably at least 70 at the water. We followed the bits of blue ocean we could see from the train station and made our way to the shore where there was a small street of restaurants and gelato shops. It was so nice to be near the beach, while I'm absolutely in love with Rome and am having the time of my life, it's always nice to have that taste of home. We went armed with books for class, mine was a novella so it was an easy, pleasant read, to hunker down after we got some seafood. The main goal of the day today was to have seafood though, which we had very successfully.
While wandering along the ocean side we stumbled upon, Mare Nostrum, a seafood restaurant that had some gorgeous outdoor seating with a view of the beach. The chef and owner were both extremely nice, tried to help us with Italian and speak whatever English they could with us. They also brought us three courses of free food. We each ordered a pasta with baby lobsters and clams, as you can see in the picture they didn't short you on the seafood, considering that is just the shells of the seafood that was in the pasta. It was probably a 1:1 ratio of seafood to noodle, if not more seafood. After we ordered, they started with the free food, the first was the only dish in my whole month in Italy I didn't enjoy. It was polenta with shaved dried fish on it, we thought it was brown sugar on the polenta when they brought the plate out... but no it was salted dried fish that they used a cheese grater with. The second course they brought were a few pieces of pasta with baby octopus in a red sauce. It was amazing. I really don't know what else to say, my mouth is watering as I think of it though. Then came our main courses, which I probably would eat every day for the rest of the week if I could, and then when we said we were done and didn't want any coffee or dessert, he brought a mini flan for each of us, which was really good as well.
After lunch was when we hit the beach. I don't think my friends really knew what to do with my excitement. I immediately took my shoes off, dug my toes in the sand and headed for the water (which was really cold). It was so nice to breath in the fresh air, soak up the sun and while they went to sit up on this ledge thing to read I plopped down straight on the sand, no towel needed. We hit up a gelato stand on the way to the train station, like Gabby and I had done yesterday, and once again got some amazing gelato for 1.50. Today I got banana and straccialetta (which is their equivalent of chocolate chip). Delicious.
Anyways time to hit the sack, even if it's not even 9:30 yet, tomorrow's one of the big days we've been waiting for CARNIVAL!!!!!! Heading to the bus at 5:30am. My mask is ready and I'm ready for some all you can sweets and all you can drink hot chocolate.