lunedì 19 luglio 2010

Chillin in the green vale



I’m working on another blog, which I am sure will prove to be more interesting than this one, but it’s not ready yet, and I’m not even giving any clues, so you’ll just have to wait!! Curious??? HA!
On Saturday we decided to take a break from our quasi-cryogenic air conditioned states, actually enjoy the hot weather, and – who knows – maybe even engage in social activities with friends and loved ones? It seemed like a good idea at the time, and well, that’s precisely what it turned out to be….
Luca’s brother’s mother in law (got that??!) owns a plot in a holiday village on Lake Garda called Villaggio Valverde, which is run by a cooperative and takes the form of a campsite, but where instead of tents there are little wooden houses, each with a little garden, and instead of foreign tourists there are local families who have purchased their plots and then pay a monthly rental fee all year round in order to use the pool, tennis courts, bar and other facilities. It was a first for me, as I’m more a “I’ll wait for you here on the sun lounger while you ask the cocktail waiter to bring me a drink” kind of girl, but it was fun to do something different and very cool indeed to spend the afternoon in the (albeit PACKED) pool, teaching the girls to swim without armbands.
The villaggio itself was well-kept, with clean toilets and showers (communal darrrrling eeewwwww!!) and a cute woodland area at the back with pathways and picnic tables – ideal for escaping from the hot midday sun! The evening was spent lazing in the garden with the whole family; the men doing their “Me – man – me – make – fire” barbecue thing, and the girls putting together the potato salad, gossiping and generally chilling out. It wouldn’t be my thing for any more than a day or two (tons of kids, acquagym en masse, communal showers, ballroom dancing in the evening…) but it was definitely nice to chill out with the fam and spend an entire day in a bikini and sarong, even at dinner… At one point, while we were in the super-crowded pool, with noisy children dive-bombing on all sides, disco music blaring out, and the “pensioners’ exercise corner” just a few feet away, I caught Luca’s eye and we both burst out laughing. Not our thing, but definitely a good experience and the perfect way to thaw out our air conditioned bodies and minds!

lunedì 12 luglio 2010

Hot

It’s Monday morning, back to school (or that’s how it feels) and I spent the entire weekend at home, lying on the sofa under the air conditioning whilst the outside world enjoyed 35 degree heat. Not sure that “enjoyed” is necessarily the best word for it – it was so humid that the 2 minutes I spent outside to move my car made it absolutely unbearable – although I’m sure that those thousands of people who hit the beach this weekend had a much nicer time of it than I did, all things considered. It’s not that I’m lazy or incapable of “making the most of things” (as my mum would say), but this weekend brought with it a rather unpleasant situation whereby constant nausea prevented me from behaving like a normal person, and if it wasn’t for Luca sticking by me and sacrificing his weekend for the sake of the common good…..well, I don’t know what I would have done. So, unfortunately I am unable to regale you with tales of exciting trips, new discoveries, run-ins with the local peasant community, or any of the half-readable stuff I normally like to write about. Instead we watched two films – ‘Wolfman’, which was scary but entertaining enough and another with Denzel Washington (don’t remember the title), which was set in a post-apocalyptic future and involved him trying to get the last surviving bible to a safe location. Very forgettable but we always appreciate Denzel, no? And that was my weekend. Two mediocre movies and a 200 euro electricity bill (that’s my estimate based on the 24/7 air con – and we didn’t even care!)… If anything more interesting happens in the near future, I’ll be sure to document it….