Postcards From Across the Pond

Intro

Last autumn, having sadly overlooked Italy during my first 23 years in Britain, we decided to visit the southern region. It was a lovely holiday, so we followed it up with a trip to the northern territories. What we had not factored in was that this holiday began four days after our Devon holiday, meaning the laundry was barely dry before we had to repack and hit the road once more.

Day One – Garda

Our flight was so early that, when we got up, my watch had not yet turned on. It expects me to sleep until six o’clock and it wasn’t buying this 3:30 am shit. Not at all. But an early start means an early arrival so, by ten in the morning, we had flown over the Channel and France and whatever else is in the way of the UK and Italy and landed at Valerio Catullo Airport. It was sorta like a bus trip to Guildford, only not as interesting.

Garda reminds me a bit of Cyprus, where it was all hotels and restaurants, but at Lake Garda they are a lot older. I know Cyprus was occupied by the Romans, and they left some nifty ruins there, but the part we were in last year was quite new. No one is going to walk along the lakefront here and say, “I remember when this was all fields!”

That it has been built up like this for many centuries was confirmed by a wall painting in the café we visited, depicting the view as it was in Roman times. I know it was just a painting, but it was copied from an original photograph, so it must be authentic.

At the café, where I attempted to order a coffee, it occurred to me that my wife spent the last month learning all things Italian, and I never even bothered to look up how to count to ten. Whenever I am called upon to speak some Italian (or simply, out of politeness, make an attempt) I fall back on Spanish. That appears to be close enough, and if that fails, almost everyone here speaks English. Along the lakefront, there are copious bars, restaurants and ice cream parlours, so I am certain to find someone I can communicate with. Whatever misadventures befall me, I am not likely to starve to death.

After the café, we sat with a beverage and admired the lake and, when our room was ready, we unpacked.

Our room is great. It’s small but tidy, air conditioned, and there is a space for everything. Plus, we are at the end of the hall, and our window looks out over an expansive roof garden that is accessible through a door right next to our room’s door (or, I suppose, we could just climb out the window). And, incredibly, it has the only shower cubicle I have encountered in any hotel, anywhere, that absolutely does not leak. It’s an amazement.

Seeing the roof garden made me instantly regret not bringing any cigars. Usually, on these types of holidays, there is no time or place to smoke. But here, the roof garden practically demands it. So, during a free moment, I asked Stephanie, the affable young lady at the desk, where I might purchase some cigars. She sent me to a tobacco shop and, hey presto, four Henry Clays and three H. Upmanns (and €50) later, I’m set for the week. I’ll need to go back and buy some more before we leave. That was a good price.

On our way out to hunt up dinner, we unexpectedly encountered three fellow travellers. Oddly, the forty or so members of our tour group are scattered around the area, and the five of us—me, my wife, and three single ladies—are the only ones staying at this hotel. Consequently, we ended up having dinner together at a waterside restaurant and formed a bond that lasted throughout the week.

By the end of the evening, we were definitely the five musketeers, though by virtue of being a couple, my wife and I were sort of a fifth wheel. So, you might say they are the three musketeers and we’re just hangers on.

At any rate, we keep paling around together.

One is named Sally (not her real name), another goes by Sadie (also not her real name), and the third one—who lives in Skye—introduced herself numerous times but none of us could figure out what it was. It sounded like some sort of hyphenated, Celtic conglomeration like Aelwen-Gormlaith (definitely not her real name), so I referred to her as Double-Barrel and my wife calls her “Our Lady of Skye.”

After returning to the hotel, I sat with a Corona and a cigar on the roof garden, simultaneously listening to a brass band in the square and dance music in the piazza. It was magic.

Day Two – Mad Dogs and Englishmen

On Day two it was so hot that, after breakfast and a short walk, I stood in our air-conditioned room literally dripping with sweat and realizing it was going to be a long day.

We’re pleased our room has air conditioning, but it’s rather lacking in lighting, or to be more exact, the switches to operate the lighting. There are numerous switches on the walls, but they are A) hard to see (black on black on black), B) largely inoperable, and C) random. They seem to turn different lights off and on with no relation to where they are, and try as we may, we have not found any way to turn off the bathroom light. The best we can do is close the door.

Having seen a bit more of the area, I was pleased to find that the hotels and bars, as well as the private homes in the surrounding streets, are all in keeping with the Italian style: big windows, outdoor access (balconies and roof gardens), shutters, curtains, stuff like that. The buildings seem to be constructed for the convenience and comfort of their occupants, whereas buildings in the UK are constructed solely to maximize profit.

We were supposed to have half the day off, but half the day turned out to be until 10:30, when we had to assemble with our larger group at the ferry port to get on the boat.

The itinerary looked good: travel by boat to Sirmione, spend the rest of the morning and early afternoon there, then ferry on to Salo where we would be cut loose until 6:00 pm. In reality, that translated to a boat ride of one and a half hours, giving us and hour and a half in Sirmione, which was not enough time to have lunch and nose about, then we spent another two hours on the boat (during which the boat went back to Garda, something that both amused and annoyed some of us in the group) before being ejected into the empty town of Salo.

It was after 4:00 pm, hot as hell, and no one was about. And the town was a mix of contrasts. Part of it looked abandoned and down at heel, but on the other side, there were rows of high-end shops selling really posh, and expensive, merchandise. (Incidentally, this was a stark departure from Sirmione, where the term “over-tourism” might have been coined.) We wandered in the heat, then found an open café and sat with a cup of coffee.

Then, slowly, the town came to life. People appeared, a few cars inched their way along the narrow lanes, and the shops opened. That’s when it occurred to us that we had been dumped there during the heat of the day when normal people are inside where it was cool, waiting until the later afternoon to go back out. With actual people out doing actual activities, Salo didn’t look quite as uninspiring, but I’m still not tempted to go back there.

Back at base, we recouped and assembled for dinner. The choice was a fish restaurant that we had scoped out on our way back from the ferry. The draw was that they used locally caught fish. Only Our Lady of Skye (who we have decided to rename Ellie-Mae) and Sally attended as Sadie felt a bit under the weather due to the weather (she has asthma, and this oppressive heat and humidity isn’t helping). She told us this as the five of us sat in the hotel lobby, with her drinking a beer. She does like a drink, does Sadie.

At any rate, the four of us had a grand time, and stayed until nearly midnight, despite needing to be up extra early to catch the bus to Parma.

Next: Parma and a day off …