Holidaying in Italy

 

 This August I had the extreme pleasure of holidaying in Italia, lake Garda with my family and my bestest chummy Abi (aka Flabby/Top wench/Cake making extraordinaire). Although it was very hot and humid we had a brilliant time. Trust me, us milk bottles (otherwise known as Elise and Abi) even got a bit of a tan. Abi was so proud of herself, bless. Everyday we whipped out the factor 50, we are English and we burn, so the 50 was defiantly needed. At the start of the holiday after landing in Venice, we went to get our hire car. I'll just say our hire care was more of a hire bus. It was humongous. My dad purposely hired a big car because there were 6 of us going and we also needed room for all the luggage. But we were not expecting a car that was as big as we got. We had a huge, black Mercedes people carrier. The boot of it was about as big as my wardrobe, no lie. Immediately we wanted to give the car a name. After much intense deliberation we decided upon Hank the Tank. He served us well on holiday and we all miss him dearly.

After a long, hot drive in Hank we finally arrived in the holiday park looking lovely and sweaty.
After the longest 20 minutes of my life we were finally checked in and ready to go. Our Eurocamp rep was called Stuart. He was very English and very moist. It really seemed as though in the short time I spent with him had sweated out all of his bodily fluid. It really wasn't pretty. He also seemed intent on giving us a weather report for the week every 10 seconds. Constantly I was reminded of the 42 degree heatwave that would be hitting us on the Saturday (it never came, Saturday was 30 degrees and the coolest day of the week. Silly Stuart). Sweatiness aside, Stuart came with some perks. Eurocamp had a golf buggy and Stuart (being the #lad that he is) let us all ride in it. Abi was particularly pleased about this, and enjoyed herself thoroughly.


In Italy, like the proper British tourists we are, we had to visit Venice and Verona. First was Venice. As pretty and as quirky as it was I really didn't think its was all it cracked up to be. I loved the canals although I wouldn't do well as I absolutely hate boats. In Venice they are very into masked balls and fancy dress. Therefore pretty much every shop in Venice stocked creepy, decorated masks. Everyone else hated them and said they were uber creepy, whereas me, being the twerp that I am, loved them and bought 2 for my bedrooms. Call me a freak, but really think they're really prettily painted. Also in Venice are the famous gondolas. At first I thought they were really fun and authentic, with all the gondola mean dressed in stripey tops and straw hats. But the closer I got, the less authentic I realised they were. I saw the men on mobiles, in Nike trainers with tattoos and piercings everywhere. It kind of shows how much a place can change in such a small amount of time (my mum told me that Venice was completely different 10 years ago). So to sum up Venice didn't live up to my expectations, which was a bit pants really.

The other place we visited in Italy was Verona. Lots of people know of Verona because of  one Shakespeare's famous plays was set there: Romeo & Juliet. In Verona there is a place which claims to be Juliet's balcony from the play. (The play is completely fictional and her balcony was also. Therefore the balcony is just any old balcony in Verona chosen to cheat a load of tourists and make them spend lots of money on souvenirs) As fake as the balcony was floods of tourists still squeezed into a tiny space just to take a picture of it, shamefully myself included. Though in the small courtyard where the balcony was situated there was also a gate. On this gate people locked padlocks to symbolise their love, similar to the bridge in Paris. Although this is just a scam to sell padlocks for ridiculous prices, it was pretty cute.

Also in Verona was alley after alley of shops, ranging from designer to tacky crap shops. It was on one of these allies that I discovered Sephora. THAT SHOP IS BEAUTIFUL. It sells more expensive make-up and perfume. Some brands that it sells are Dior, Narz, benefit, Marc Jacobs and loads more. I walked in and I felt like I was in heaven. Shame I couldn't afford half of it (I spent half of it on Wi-Fi codes for the holiday camp, which I kept losing). I don't think they have a Sephora near me. If anyone knows of one please please tell me. (My email is in the 'About Me' tab)

Basically I could go on forever about my holiday in Italy. It was so hot, which was fantastic because back in England is was cold and rainy, haha. I had such a good time and took about 1,000 photos! I took all of the pictures posted in this blog.(I'm a bit of a trigger happy person) I'm going to post some of them in my 'Photography' tab at the top. Also I'm going to post lots of other pictures that I have taken very soon. I'm sorry that this blog was a bit rambly and boring but I didn't have much else to write about! If you took the time to read it, thankyou!!! I promise my next blog will be much shorter and hopefully more entertaining than this one! (Btw, take a look at my friend's blogs: bakingwench.blogspot.com, melissajadeb.blogspot.com and jesswileman.blogspot.com)

ell kate x