Sidney wanted to see the ocean, or more technically, the sea since we were so close to the coast. She researched and decided on Anzio which is 35 miles southwest of Rome. It has a museum of archaeological objects and a museum about a World War II battle that occurred at the town.

After all our train travel this past spring, getting tickets was easy as well as cheap. Our only option was the regionale trains which stop all along the short distance. So the train travel took almost an hour.

A few sights from the train.

The town is not large. We headed towards the museums.

When we got there, we found they had just closed but would open again at 4:00 pm.

We then headed towards the beach where Google maps showed there were also restaurants. We walked along a street parallel to the beach but could not find a street that headed straight down. There were interesting looking buildings.

Here’s real fixer upper. It was once a casino built in the early 20th century.

We finally found a street that got us to the beach only to find that the restaurant Google maps said was open, was closed.

But another restaurant nearby was open and we sat outside for lunch as by this point, we were getting quite hungry.

The waiters spoke to us in Italian. We were all getting pretty good at restaurant conversation. For antipasti, we ordered the mix of six fish dishes, but then did not precisely understand what each dish was. They were all pretty tasty.

This was followed by our pasta or main course which were generous sized for lunch.

We then needed to walk it all off along the beach while Sidney collected sand and tiny seashells.

The weather forecast had been for cloud but we wandered in sunshine.

We returned to the museums which had a no photo sign that I didn’t see until after taking a few photos.

The battle of Anzio beach head part of the museum was only two rooms with artifacts like uniforms, equipment, newspaper pages, photographs of some of the people involved in the battle.

The battle of Anzio was largely a disaster. After Italy surrendered in 1943, Allied forces started into Italy which was still under German control. British troops started in the “toe” of the boot while British and American forces started near Salerno, the “shin” of the boot. As progress was slow, a combined British American force in January 1944 landed at Anzio hoping to drive on towards Rome. Delays after the initial landing allowed the Germans to organize and counterattack. The forces in the town were subjected to repeated artillery fire for four months until forces arrived from the south. One of the information posters in the museum lists the lessons learned from Anzio including not to establish narrow beach heads.

The museum also has a poster of Dino DeLaurentis’ movie, called Lo Sbarco di Anzio. It was known as Anzio in the USA or The Battle of Anzio in the UK. It starred Robert Mitchum.

It was getting dark when we boarded the return train.

We had no dinner plans so went to a nearby restaurant. The woman we greeted at the door looked very displeased when I said we did not have a reservation but they sat us at a reserved table which they wanted back by 9:00 pm. As we were not very hungry after our large lunch, we had no problem finishing in time.