Tempting Tuesday: Cooling Off in Calabria at Giovino Beach by Cherrye Moore

This month we’re heading to the beach with a great line up of Tempting Tuesday posts by writers from around the world. I asked them to share with us their favorite beach, which is a refreshing topic during this sticky and hot time of year in southern Italy. This week Cherrye Moore from My Bella Vita is taking us to one of her favorite beaches in Catanzaro, Calabria. Looks mighty tempting to me!

Welcome, Cherrye!

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If there is one thing I’ve fallen in love with as much as Calabria’s beaches-it is sharing those beaches with my family and friends and today I’d like to invite you come along to my favorite beach-Giovino.

Giovino is a small stretch of beach that extends past the noise and bustle of busy Catanzaro Lido in Calabria’s capital city, in a relatively new development beyond the harbor. The area has a wide beach with tan sand, features both a public beach and private lido areas and is accented by tall, blue mountains that overlook the sea.

 

Most of the lidi in Giovino offer daily, weekly or seasonal umbrella rentals, which come with two lounging beach chairs, a colorful umbrella and a private beach area that is cleaned daily. Many Calabrians-especially those with teenagers or young children-rent an umbrella for the summer, usually next to their best friend or a close family member’s umbrella, and spend every morning at the beach.

My choice lido is Sunrise, located near the beginning of the Giovino stretch. If you are visiting Catanzaro for a day or two, you can rent your own umbrella and lounge chairs for €10-€15 a day, depending on their location on the beach.

The small, dark wood kiosk blares fun music and sells drinks, gelato and sandwiches and the owners have provided a free beach volleyball net for their beach-goers. A well-kept flower garden surrounds the entrance to the main restaurant, that serves fresh seafood by day and wood-stove pizzas at night.

The water, while still surprisingly cool for mid-July, is a refreshing retreat from the blazing Mezzogiorno sun that shines over this little part of Catanzaro. It is almost always clean and clear and the laughter of children splashing in the mini waves echoes throughout the quiet beach.

Oh, yes. Giovino beach in Catanzaro Lido is still a lesser-known, family-beach-going-kind-of-place, so if you do visit, don’t tell them I sent you. The locals, like me, want to keep it that way.

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Cherrye Moore is a Calabria travel consultant and freelance writer living in southern Italy. She writes about travel for MNUI.com and about living and traveling in Calabria on her own site, My Bella Vita. You can also visit her at her bed and breakfast in Catanzaro, Il Cedro.