We lived in a tiny town near the base called Tirrenia. We were living in a Mediterranean resort town a block from the beach!! (OK, we had to walk a mile to the American beach). I found an American living there and asked him how he liked Tirrenia. He thought it was fantastic, but it is like a zoo in the summer because there are so many vacationers there.
The town is tiny. I walked from one end to the other in maybe 30 minutes - and it's a lot longer than it is wide! The map you see here (with notations of a few important spots) is the entire town.
While there were quite a few American kids around, our next door neighbor was an Italian boy. We really never were able to talk, but that didn't stop us from playing together. I remember learning to play Bocci Ball from him.
