After our hectic summer, then me working sessions in UK and two years of holidaying here at our home we decided to indulge ourselves with a break in Italy, one of the few foreign holiday destinations available from Malaga airport within our budget. 

Guffawing like a pair of pre-adolescents, our arrival at Milan Malpensa airport saw us searching for a shuttle bus to our hotel Spagna (well we thought it sounded like smegma anyway!). However, once spoken by the driver we realised it is pronounced spanya (like in lasagne of course!!) and it took us a few days before it dawned on us that this is the Italian word for Spain – a coincidence which amused us anyway!

Anyway, Arona is an old little town with many of its buildings dating back to the 16th and 17th centuries, tiny little streets, windows with shutters, Romeo balconies and churches with towers (and not so tuneful but very early morning bells!).  The first thing that stuck us was how neglected the buildings seemed, with crumbling walls, peeling or absent paint and splintered woodwork, leading us to the assumption that the inhabitants must be quite poor.  The amount of graffiti was reminiscent of Salford subways and whilst I was unable to read it, some of the pictures were graphic in a multi-lingual way! Inside the hotel, the dowdy theme continued but it was very clean, the staff were friendly and cheerful and we had a lovely view of the new eye hospital!

Wearing our usual Spanish attire of shorts and t-shirts we set off to get our bearings only to find ourselves constantly stared at, heads turning everywhere we went with Alex blushing as his legs were appraised!  Returning the scrutiny, however, made us realise that the locals were all immaculately groomed and dressed in autumn/winter clothing of very high quality, including some in scarves, despite the warm sunshine. As you know, we are fairly low observers of fashion hierarchies and when we are trying our best we wear our holiday “George” or “Primark” gear with pride!  However, closer examination of the shop windows revealed the reason for the lack of house maintenance!  The clothes and shoe prices were phenomenal! I struggled to see a pair of shoes less than 100 euros, coats were several hundreds of euros, even underwear, nightwear and children’s wear were in the high 70s upwards! A red sock in their whites wash must be catastrophic!  Even though we ditched our shorts, we felt like eccentric hoboes for the remainder of the holiday, but it was a fun role with our Spanglish attempts at Italian. It was an interesting and different socialogical concept to observe such neatness and poise of individuals, even on the boats or working in the shops and I felt they were as sorry for me and my clothes as I was for them and their buildings.

The lake and surroundings were really beautiful and the villages look picturesque from a distance.  We went on trips on the lake most days so I will have to do different blog entries for different days as I struggle getting pictures onto each.