My Average Holidays

I’ve decided to split May into 2 parts and it will focus solely on our holiday to Italy. Part 2 will follow at some point or it’s already here depending on when you’re reading this.

This month saw our return to foreign travel as we went to one of our bucket list destinations, Lake Garda in Italy. To be more accurate, Riva del Garda. The first hurdle was the new EU Entry Exit System (EES) for non-EU citizens. Despite what we’d seen, the system on landing was fairly straightforward (not the same for the return, but more of that later), and because we are capable of following instructions, we were the first people at our coach. Despite this, we weren’t the first on because a boomer abandoned her suitcase with her husband and literally ran for the coach so she could get a seat at the front. To give you an idea of what type of people these were, when one of the TUI reps, who was Arabic(ish), got on the coach with the name tag of ‘Adam‘, the male boomer said, “That’s a good Anglo-Saxon name,” trying to be funny or just a twat (probably the latter). I was quite pleased with myself because I said, “It’s not Anglo-Saxon, mate, it’s Jewish from the Bible, Adam and Eve”. I didn’t add ‘You ignorant C***’ but hopefully, it was implicit. “Oh…yeah… I hadn’t thought of that” was his rather muted response. The guide said his name was the Egyptian version of Adam. So a good start to the holiday, at least for me.

After just over an hour, we got to Riva and then had a short walk with our suitcases to Hotel Sole, emphasis on the ‘e’ at the end. Emphasis on the ‘e’ is very common in ‘abroad‘ and is how many places and things are supposed to be pronounced like Trieste, bolognese, or even, switching languages, Tenerife, but I always feel like a knob saying it or that locals will think I’m taking the piss. Anyway, I digress… This short walk introduced us to the menace of Riva del Garda: bicyclists. There are lots of them, and they just don’t give a fuck. Despite the fact that the area we were walking on is supposed to be pedestrianised and (we later found out) there are signs telling them to get off and f’ing push, they don’t. The game seems to be to try and sneak up behind people and get as close as possible when you pass by at speed without making contact. The worst ones are the middle-aged, lycra-clad Germans who roam around in packs. To my credit, I didn’t “accidentally” knock any of them off, which just shows how much I’ve matured. However, 60 isn’t far off, and after I’ve hit that milestone, I claim the right to immediately regression to a seven-year-old.

Back to the hotel. If you’ve looked at any pictures of Riva del Garda, you will recognise Hotel Sole. It’s the big yellow building right at the front. This was the reason we picked it. We like to play the ‘Been There!’ game, which is when somewhere comes on the telly and you say, “Been there!”. To make it less generic, we look for specific locations when we go on holiday. For example, if you look at any photos or videos of the Rialto bridge in Venice, you’ll see on the left-hand side some red canopies which cover a restaurant. We’ve eaten there! It was expensive and mediocre, which we knew it would be, but whenever anything about Venice comes on the TV, they WILL show the Rialto, and we can say ‘We’ve eaten there’. If it was a points-scoring game, that would definitely be an extra… 4 points.

The hotel is advertised as a four-star, it’s not. Having said that, it was clean, the bathroom worked as expected, the beds were okay (after Lyn got an extra pillow), and we (mostly) didn’t starve. We decided to go half board just for ease, which was definitely a mistake. On our first night, there was very little choice; the first course just said ‘A tasting of appetisers’, and what they brought out was Squidward on toast. I’ve had octopus in Lisbon; it’s disgusting, but this was too much even for me. For Lyn, it was a plate of horror mixed as it was with beetroot, rocket, and salami, all things she doesn’t eat. They even put some smaller examples of Squidward in my seafood pasta, and I suspect SpongeBob and Patrick were also there. This didn’t bode well.

The next morning, I thought I’d tried their ‘cooked’ breakfast buffet. It was cold, and after mistaking fried aubergines for mushrooms, I never bothered again. The pastries were okay. We found a café, Bar Pasticceria Maroni, which was open early and seemed to be frequented by locals. Turns out it was also cheap and had very nice cakes, so it turned into a regular spot for us. Later that morning, we had a guided tour (in the rain) of the town by the TUI reps, which was really just a walk to several eateries that they probably got a kickback from. On the plus side, we stopped at a pizza restaurant, Bella Napoli, who said that they would cater for Lyn, so for lunch, we returned, and a very happy Lyn had a ham and pineapple pizza, no tomatoes. I had a calzone (remember the e).

During our welcome chat the previous day, our rep had stated what a wonderful tour of Bolzano and Renon was, which was a bit off because as far as she was aware at that time, there were no more spots available and hadn’t bothered to mention that fact. As she’d bigged it up AND mentioned a train, I got on the TUI app and booked the tour there and then. Lyn then said that someone had just asked to book it, and the rep had said it was sold out… Seems that in between her checking it in the morning and that evening, someone had cancelled, and I’d got the last spot. Go me and my impatience. So on Monday, we got up early and made our way to the pickup point.

Our guide was Fredrick, a 72-year-old American who moved to Europe when he was 17. He had a business selling pipes (the smoking kind) till the market fell out of that in the 90s and had been a tour guide ever since. The blurb for the tour had stated that you needed good mobility, but Fredrick, with his walking stick, was the slowest of all of us. Nice chap, very knowledgeable, shouldn’t have been leading this particular tour of 50 people. Bolzano is the home of Ötzi the Iceman, which would have been interesting to see. Fredrick offered to take the group to the museum to see it, and off they shuffled, but it had taken so long to walk from the bus to the centre of town that we didn’t bother. This was a good thing because an hour later we stumbled across the museum on our own only to find it was closed, and a helpful passer-by told us that it was always closed on a Monday. I’d have been spitting feathers if I’d gone with the rest of the group.

After our free time in Bolzano which I’ve not covered but is an Austrian town in northern Italy whose residents speak German, the group shuffled its way to the Ritten cable car, which takes 12 minutes to go up 1,000 metres to a train station. This might have provided excellent views and photo opportunities if we hadn’t been crammed to maximum capacity, and the windows immediately started to steam up. From the top, we took the train to Renon. The following is a copy of the AI result when you search for Renon:

‘Renon (also known as Ritten) is a stunning mountain plateau and municipality in South Tyrol, northern Italy. Sitting about 1,200 meters above Bolzano, it is famous for its 360-degree Dolomites views, the historic narrow-gauge Renon Railway, Europe’s tallest Earth Pyramids, and excellent year-round hiking.‘

I can see that it’s very pretty, especially when the sun is shining, but to tell the truth, by this point, we were bored and hungry. Because we’d been promised good food in Renon, we hadn’t tried any of the very nice-looking food in Bolzano. Long story short, the food was late, shit, and they got our order wrong. The group then doddered very slowly to the Earth Pyramids, but by this time, Lyn and I were feeling very rebellious, so we wandered away from the group and went to a café we’d seen along the 20-minute (should have taken 10) walk from the restaurant to the Pyramids. I still have no idea what Earth Pyramids are, and despite providing a link above for yourselves, have no intention of finding out.

The coach ride back provided excellent views and was extra comfy as Lyn and I had been one of the last people on the coach and got the back row to ourselves that morning. Back row is always a risk because you could end up sharing it with gods know what/who but today it paid off. And that was our first few days in Italy. Depending on when you are reading this part two will either here or I’ve yet to write it.