Sunset at Camping La Quercia Lake Garda Northern Italy
Our motor home being a Fiat which is an Italian car was the motive for us to have the van serviced in Italy, our major problem now is translation or to find a service agent that can converse with us.
We appear at the gate of Camping La Quercia in Lazise on the shores of Lake Garda in northern Italy and are immediately greeted by a fervent attendant named Dennis who comprehends sufficient English and ushers me into the office and introduces me to Claudia who has a great command of English.
Claudia assures me that in the morning we will find a service agent and so begins our holiday from our holiday.
What have we stumbled into were our thoughts when we arrived at Camping La Quercia, the staff were so friendly talking to us as if we were locals and accommodating our needs and requests for translation with the motor mechanic. Tina who speaks better English than me was so obliging and kind and organised a bungalow for us while the van has a bit of work done to it.
www.laquercia.it
Village of Lazise Lake Garda
Unfortunately the gear box problem has turned out to be a bit trickier than anticipated as the gearboxes in the English vans are about face to the European version as they are right hand drive so the part is not readily available so poor us will have to spend a week or two sitting by the pool overlooking the lake with the stunning mountains in the background, canoeing, archery, tennis, swimming, walking I only hope we get time for some rest, then Claudia comes out and tells me if we go to Movie land ( like Movie World on the Gold Coast )on Saturday they have free entry for their birthday.
Camping La Quercia are also celebrating their 50th birthday so on the Saturday they had a free Luna park with lots of give aways for the kids followed by a wonderful fireworks display. Daniel made friends with a young Italian boy named Daniele, who spoke no English so it was interesting to see them playing and talking as if they understood each other.
Our first week at La Quercia saw us sharing the facilities with a lot of German people and we were inundated with Italians on the weekend, on the Sunday the Italians disappeared and we were swamped with Dutch families taking advantage of some public holidays in The Netherlands.
Skin cancer it would seem is no threat to the fair skinned Northern Europeans as the swimming pools were aglow with sunburnt faces and bodies as far as the eye could see. Don’t get me wrong we did see the odd hat on a head but not a single rashie.
After such a hectic schedule it has been good to take stock and relax by the pool while catching up with ourselves, it has given us time to reflect back on our trip so far and to discover how much of it the children have absorbed.
We have also had time to build up some friendships with other tourists and the staff, during this time, we have had some long discussions on their lifestyles while trying to enlighten the Europeans into the Australian ethos. Some are very surprised that our lives are not so different. I have again found that supermarkets are one of the most fascinating places to visit when looking for some insight into the local society, although a lot of the bigger supermarkets are now very similar to ours the way food is purchased can be very different.
The Europeans seem to be more conscious when it comes to the environment and recycling of our rubbish is requested everywhere we stay and the bins are always separated into glass, paper and organic, I have even seen bins for bread only.
But then on the other hand they can be quite wasteful as a lot of products are individually wrapped, even though a lot of these products like cakes, bread and croissants have long use by dates, I have a loaf of Pane Intergrale Bauletto (brown grain bread) at the moment that does not expire until 9th July 2008, I don’t know how long it has been at the supermarket but with 2 months to go I can savour it until we reach England again. It is not the way we would normally buy bread, but we have found the only fresh bread in Italy is the big hard crusty white loaves which taste wonderful but you don’t feel that it’s doing your body any favours. I think the European trick is to consume lot’s of red wine to wash the bread through so I am going to consume more wine from hear on, for medicinal purposes only of course.
Thanks to some well timed public holidays our car part has been held up in the mail, The wonderful staff at La Quercia are now treating us like locals and are starting to say g,day to us aswell as other guests instead of Bon Journo, The Animation staff have made us regulars calling us on stage at will and sometimes putting us into embarrassing positions.
I am trying to convince Deb that some of this video needs to be put onto the blog so bear with us until I convince her and keep an eye out.
We even had 1 night where they were a few actors down and we had to rehearse and perform for them, doing a few skits.
Family Walkeden taking an encore with Animation Maestro Max (Massimiliano)
We had a wonderful Dutch family move in next door, Hans, Bep, Daniek and Myron, Hans took pity on me when he saw me arrive home with a huge bag of groceries (about 15 kilograms) which I had carted about 9kms up and down hills.
He kindly offered to drive me to the supermarket next time, to my amazement the supermarket was only 2kms away, compared to the one I was riding to and was much better and cheaper, especially as I would need to eat half the groceries after the 18km round trip. The best thing about this was that I was now able to purchase more fruit veg and beer, as I was very minimal with such heavy products for some unknown reason.
The Mechanics have worked all day Saturday to fix the van and we will be able to leave Sunday, but I will be sad to leave as we really have loved this place.
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