On our travels again

Saturday 21 June

Slighly nervous start to our jaunt to Italy. After the usual poor night's sleep before travelling, we were up early enough to get the dishwasher emptied and the garden watered before 08:30, when the taxi was due to arrive. By 08:25 we were thinking 'shouldn't it be here by now?'. At 08:35, imagining the taxi had gone to a similarly-named street at the other end of town, I was on to another firm to see if they had anyone nearby.  At this point, the original taxi finally hove into view. Fortunately, we'd had the wit to buy our train tickets the day before, so were on the train just in time.

Uneventful ride up through Kent, and a prompt change to the connection to St Pancras, where the check-in area was utter chaos. Rather than join queues of 2005 Gatwick proportions, and with rising anxiety levels, we retired, at 10:30, for a suitable stiffener in the Betjeman Arms, and felt better about the ensuing process. By the time we got back downstairs, the queues had diminished, and we were soon on the train, seated opposite a pleasant couple from the Moray coast, who are on the same tour as we.

Gare de Lyon and hotel

The Paris hotel room was small, hot and noisy (the air conditioning was not working, but nobody had bothered to tell it not to bother trying). I've met kitchen sinks bigger than the bath. The advertised rate is 200€. The hotel's strong point is that it is nailed on to the side of the Gare de Lyon, so there's no need for another coach ride, thank goodness.

While Martyn rested, I went out to buy some milk (we no longer travel without a tea kit) and to check out local restaurants. In the event, we decided to head for a known brand restaurant on the Champs, where we sat out on the pavement, watching people and enjoying a pretty decent supper, returning to the hotel on Line 2, part of which is above ground. The train was full, including a group of Saturday night revelling girls. Language apart, it could have been London. The Metro has improved a lot in recent years: the carriages (on lines 1 and 2 at least) are connected with full-size bellows, which makes one feel safer late at night. Line 1 is fully automated and runs, as before, on pneumatic tyres.


Sunday 22 June

Pleasant stroll after breakfast across the river to Austerlitz. One fellow lying sparked out half way across the pavement and half between the parked motorbikes. Breathing, good colour, so we left him to it. A couple of fellows on the bridge swigging from a half-bottle of vodka and smoking doubtful hand-rolled cigarettes, three guys dancing and shouting beside a parked Range-Rover that they didn't look likely to own. Tail end of a midsummer party on a vast barge moored on the Quai de la Rapee. Walking near the station is a bit of a challenge because of the hundreds of motorbikes, including some expensive machinery, parked there. We guess that they belong to weekday commuters into the GdL who bike on to their places of work.

Back up to the Gare de Lyon to check which part our train would leave from. Yamaha, as a marketing stunt, had placed a slightly out of tune piano at the end of the platforms, so Martyn gave an impromptu recital, which was charming.  Nearby was a stand at which you can recharge your mobile phone in a way I hadn't seen before. You plug in your phone, sit on a bike saddle and pedal away until it's charged up.

Meanwhile, our tour manager was in the process of being mugged elsewhere in the station. Unsuccessful attempt on the part of the mugger, who fell over and was caught. Our Sue managed to stay foursquare, but has bruises from the kick she took to her leg. Meanwhile, back at the hotel, two of the party had got stuck in a broken down lift for an hour and a half, and Sue went back to look after them while I took care of her case. A lot of the party, lacking leadership, got on the first part of the train, from which you can't walk through to the second. They eventually came past us looking hot and bothered. Some unhappy campers in the party, I fear.

[Later] Happier still when we were all turfed out of the train at Chambery and told to get into another to continue the journey to Milan. This is not proving to be the stress-free experience we'd been hoping for, one way and another.

[Later still]  Things went altogether better once we were in our second TGV, though the process of joining it was utterly chaotic.  One announcement was made in French but as the public address was faulty, I didn’t catch much more than a reference to a fault and to the train on the opposite platform.  It was only when a French chap joined our carriage and told us he was going to Paris that we twigged.  Once we had carted ourselves and our stuff down off the train and up into the corresponding carriage of the ‘new’ train, we rattled on merrily through the mountains and on down to Turin.  The southern side of the Alps is very craggy, a little like that of the Pyrenees, and the ride down from Bardonecchia was a bit like that from the old Lötschberg tunnel down to Brig.  We saw next to nothing of Turin, since the railway passes through the city below the ground.  After that the terrain is dead flat all the way to Milan, with mile after mile of rice paddies.  The line is reasonably fast, however, so we made up the fifteen minutes we’d lost in Chambéry. 

Our tour manager’s next task was to find the coach which was to take us on to Gardone.  The traffic was very light, fortunately, so we were at the hotel in an hour and a half.  The driving was somewhat hair raising: the driver took several calls on his telefonino, granted, with a bluetooth headset, but he took it out after each call and had to grope around to find it again each time.  The behaviour of motorists on the ring road was every bit as hair-raising as on the Toulouse by-pass at 12:05 (when the mad dash home for lunch begins).

Well, we got to the hotel in one piece each and were soon in our room.  ‘I’m not having this!’, Martyn muttered as we headed downstairs from reception to the room.  The room was clean and beautifully appointed, but the lake view, for which we’d paid extra, was nominal to say the least – a sliver of water visible through the trees.  Nothing to be done that evening, but the receptionist told us to come back next morning, and she’d show us what was available on a higher floor.

We were rushed into dinner before our bags were delivered, hence in the clothes we’d travelled in.  The meal itself was rather disappointing.  Cheese and salad buffet to start, choice of soup or crêpes, then salmon (OK) or kebabs (leftovers) with sautéed courgettes (ditto) and potato pûrée, and a rather dry apple cake for pudding.  Still, they’ve cut us a deal on the wine – half a bottle of wine and a bottle of water per head for 4€.

Monday 23 June

Breakfast was altogether better than dinner, with an excellent spread.  Afterwards, we went to see our new room, which is less well fitted out than the first, but has a wonderful view across the lake.  A few little maintenance issues were promptly attended to, though the (replacement) TV is still poor: good job we don’t trouble it a lot. 

Since there was mercifully nothing on the programme for the day, we explored the town a little, finding supplies of cash, water and wine, and took tickets for a ride across the lake to Garda and on to Sirmione.  A longish ride in dull weather, but it was good to be out on the water, where it’s a lot cooler than on land.  The boat bumbles along from one stylish port to the next.  You can pay extra for a faster catamaran or hydrofoil, but they have little or no open deck space, so we settled for the normale. 

Castle, Sirmione

Sirmione was very busy, and full of Germans and Americans.  Deservedly busy, since it is a charming place with an impressive castle and pleasant walks along the waterside, but consequently full of shops selling tourist tat and (fabulous!) ice cream.  We ordered salads for lunch in the café La Scala, thinking that would be a good light option.  (I was moderately pleased that I managed to order salads, wine and water – and yes, please, two glasses for the wine – in Italian without the waiter defaulting to English.  Vast piles of vegetation, but I scoffed the whole of my classico, and wiped the plate with the bread.  On one side was a young Italian chap who spent most of lunch time chatting and texting on his telefonino.  The mobile phone is a real gift to Italians: it lets them carry on talking all the time even when they’re alone.  On the other side was a couple from Hameln, with whom we exchanged pleasantries.  The American in the spectacularly awful toupée who stopped to check the menu did not join us.

We took a stroll from the castle along the waterside, accompanied for a short distance by a very tame swan: wildfowl are there in profusion, ducks, coots and cormorants.  The walk is pleasant, and brings one back into town over the hill and down an oleander-lined street past the villa lived in for many years by Maria Callas.  Altogether a good experience, raising my spirits from the weariness of the long journey.

The boat ride home was shorter: we travelled on what had started life as a car ferry, so could sit on one of the lateral car alleys in the fresh air and enjoy the ports we visited along the way.  For a French speaker, it’s a little startling when the announcement comes over the speakers: ‘Escala de Salò.  Salò, Salò, Salò!’  Looks like a stylish and attractive little town nevertheless.

Salò

Dinner was OK, and served outside by the pool, which was an improvement on the rather dingy dining room, where groups tend to be served.

Tuesday 24 June

Organised trip to Verona and Valpolicella, so a long day of coach travel and guided walks.  Verona is a delight, though spoiled by the crowds and by the constant warnings to beware of pickpockets.  The journey there was comfortable, but again the driver kept taking calls on his hand-held mobile.  The supposedly strict ban is honoured immeasurably more in the breach than in the observance.  All that said,  his driving was steady and circumspect.

A tension emerged the moment our tour manager and the guide met.  The former was keen to take her elderly bus load to the top of St Leonard’s hill to take in the view and use the lavatories at the café.  The latter wanted to get us straight into the hour-long walking tour, and launched into a history lesson, ignoring the monuments we were passing and would like to have known more about.  The guide yielded on the first point, but continued to bend our ears for the ensuing hour and a bit.  The view from the hill was very hazy: no good for photography, but we got a good grasp of the lie of the city.  (And a chance for a slash, though lacking the necessary small change, we elected instead to improve the olive crop.) 

The Adige flows rapidly round the city, which it has tended to flood at intervals throughout history.  The loop in the river in which the city centre stands makes for good views.  The trek round the narrow streets was enjoyable and informative, but the guide rather quickly started to grate on our nerves, and the sultry weather and crowds made the experience rather a trial.  The architecture is fascinating, however, and the guide’s explanation of the different styles in their historical contexts was, I admit, very informative.  Lunch was not laid on, so we ate in a café on the Bra Square, looking out at the arena.  The visit to the arena was similarly not included in the package, but we went in nevertheless.  To overcome a shortage of change, 9€ being easier to change than 10€50, the cashier deemed Martyn to be an honorary senior citizen – he wasn’t too sure what to think of that!.  Algebra fans may feel free to work out the adult and senior entry fees.

Verona, Arena preparing for opera

We had a limited stroll round town, since the weather was so oppressive, but made it to the top of the arena, and across to the castle and the old bridge.  We then had a bit of a trek from the centre to the coach park.  We were grateful for the effective air conditioning in the coach, but I was a bit unhappy about sitting down to dinner with unwashed hands and in a sweaty shirt.  (We later found the family bathroom that had to cater for the 30-odd of us.)  Dinner was wrapped round a tasting of the wines of the cantina where we stopped.  We were welcomed with a nice dry spumante, and then given tastings of four grades of valpolicella in the course of the meal.  A very civilised way of doing.  Of the red wines, we liked the least expensive best, but not enough to reach for the wallet.  The meal was OK, and mercifully not too copious.  As we started to wind our way down the hill, lightning increasingly filled the sky (there have been storms every night), and for much of the way back to Gardone we travelled in torrential rain and much surface water.  A the time of writing (late Wednesday morning) the storm rumbles on at intervals, and the rain it raineth.  Oh well.