We have traveled from Florence to Siena to Venice and now to Rimini. My husband and I braved 2 weeks with two 18 year old boys who recently graduated from high school, two girls who will celebrate their 17th birthdays during the trip and my 13 year old daughter.

I used several web sites for directions, mapquest, michelin and Mappy.com. We were most happy with Mappy. It suggested that we follow the A1 back to Bologna and then down to Rimini. It looked longer, but on major roads. The other programs suggested following the coast. We decided to go with the A1 and were thrilled to find no trucks and smooth driving. Even with a quick stop for lunch it took us about 2 hours.

Rimini is a town with 2 faces, one is the charming old town center and the other is a huge, tall buildings, tourist beach town. We were there for the beach! The road that runs along side the beach has many hotels on one side and all the beach “clubs” on the other. There is no hotel on the beach.

There are miles on beach clubs. Each club is about 100 yards wide and runs from the road to the water. There are permanently installed umbrella stands and walkways between the rows. One of my daughters absolutely hates sand and she loved this part! We paid a voucher for the beach use, about €31 per day for 7 people. This gets you and umbrella and a lounge chair. The chair is extremely conformable and has a sun shield. They are delivered to your assigned spot. At the end of the day when you turn in your towels you set up the spot for the next day. I guess the longer you are there the closer to the beach you can get. In each club are also long rows of cabanas for changing, outside showers, bathrooms, beach volleyball, playgrounds and other amusements. Every few clubs is a small restaurant. The complete order of this appealed to my sense of organization. No one sat in the sand, on towels or even blankets. The umbrella had hooks to hang up everything, so things did not get sandy. The walkways were even swept down a couple times a day! My only experience with beach towns has been along the northeast coast, NJ, VA and Md. This was civilized! It seemed that people set up camp in the late morning for a short while and then left during the hot time of day. About 3-4 people stared to come back or even come for the day. It stayed warm until after 6:00 at night! Their high season is August and they stay packed. It was really hot in early July, I can’t imagine it in August!

There are perhaps hundreds of hotels to choose from. The most expensive is the Grand Hotel at one end of the beach. This is expensive. Everything else seemed very reasonable, especially coming from Venice. I chose Le Meridien. It is a 4 star hotel and fairly new for Rimini. It is shining, clean and very modern. The a/c is even cranked up to US standards (cold). We had a quad and triple room with breakfast for €145 per room per night. The only curious thing was that the balcony (almost all rooms face the beach) has a self-locking sliding door. My son went ahead to open the room, we walked in to him locked out on the balcony! The bathroom was huge and the beds comfortable. The breakfast buffet was very large is a very modern room with light obviously from murano! They had an underground garage for the BUS. This was perfect for us.

Meals were not a highlight, remember this is a beach town and the food is not different from any other. The first night we were sent to the Embassy (which after 11:00 is a disco club). The food was okay. Keep with the simple pasta and pizzas and it was fine. The second night was less impressive, I don’t even remember the name. All the restaurants are along the road behind the hotels. There are mixed in the souvenir shops, bars and cheap clothing stores. The crowd is young and there are a lot of families.

My teens were looking forward to the clubs. There are over 75 in Rimini alone! There is a bus that runs up and down the main strip for transportation. The first night they went to a place that sprayed foam over the dance floor. They enjoyed that. The crowd was heavy German (they actually arrive with busloads of teens! My girls were not so impressed, it was techno and they were looking for hip-hop. The girls came home early and the boys stayed until after 3:00. The next night the older girls shopped and stayed around town. The boys went to the club at the Embassy with my 13-year-old! Dancing didn’t start until 12:00 and we asked them to be home by 1:00. The boys were good and my youngest had a ball!

We arrived on Sunday and left on Tuesday for Rome. We had been traveling for 10 days and I could see my travel mates were wearing thin. Rome awaited us and they seemed lethargic. My plan of rejuvenating them on the beach was not a total success. The drive to Rome took about 4 hours, at least it was all main highway.

Susan

As Susan says, we're dealing with a schizophrenic town here. While I would not go so far as to say that the centro storico is charming, there are definitely things to see. World-famous is the Tempio Malatestiano. Typically, I prefer the great Roman bridge.
   I'm really sad that Susan missed Il Lurido, known locally as *the* place to eat fish, and I won't disappoint: by my lights, the very best fish meals I've ever had in Italy, I think of the place as The Temple of Fish. Susan, you will have to go there next trip!

I wouldn't recommend Rimini as more than a beach place or a one- or two-day stop, but the town's of some interest (see my budding website).