My main reason for going to Italy, specifically to Bay Fest, was to watch one of my all time favourite bands, The Offspring.

Bay Fest is a punk festival situated on one of the most beautiful beaches in Europe – Rimini. The Offspring were the headlining band at Bay Fest this year but were playing with some other great punk bands:

• NOFX
• Pennywise
• Ska-P
• Sick of It All
• Less Than Jake
• Punkreas
• Masked Intruder
• Dead Kennedys
• The Story So Far

Bay Fest is a 3 day festival full of punk bands. Besides the amazing location and the bands (couldn’t say I didn’t like one of them) one of the reasons I would rate this one of the best festivals I have been to so far was the fact that the festival was one of the smallest festivals I have been to. No matter where I stood I was close to the stage and could see. The bands were all surprisingly on schedule.

The food and drinks could be purchased using tokens which can be bought at the venue. The festival had some nice choices of food: pizza, fries, burger, burritos and fajitas, meatballs, fried mozzarella. Vegan food was also available.

The festival had merch tents with the normal array of stuff that can be bought at festivals.

There were so many nice places to stay with the surrounding hotels and B&B’s in Rimini, all within walking distance to the festival. Luckily the hotel I stayed at, Hotel Baldinini had bicycles which made the trip quicker! Camping was an option at the festival, but in the heat of Italy, it was nice to retreat to an air-conditioned room.