Rimini returns from the brink

RIMINI will always be a special place for me because it is where I first saw
my father. My parents divorced when I was a baby and I had no contact with
him until I was a teenager.

When I was 12 my mother and I drove from England to Rimini beach. Among the
crowds, the ice-cream sellers and the plastic sun-loungers, my father and I
were reunited.

Although I was impressed with my first sighting of a palm tree, even as a
teenager I could tell that Rimini in the late 1970s was not especially
glamorous. The sandy beach was long and wide, but the various beach stations
were gaudy and indistinguishable.

The city was destroyed during the war and then rebuilt. It was Mussolini who
first brought the masses to the beaches when he built the railway line.