Day 25 – Lake Garda

We are half way through our trip yet it didn’t seem like we had been gone for long at all, or that there were the same number of days left. We hadn’t even realised that it was half way either until later in the day when we had nothing else to think about.

First things first was to get up and go to the beach in the morning. I hadn’t worked out in time the best way to get to the beach from our apartment, so we followed the road signs. It did take us a bit longer and a lot more walking was involved but at least we got there. Of course, as there were 5 of us, and everybody wants something different, decisions are hard to make. It got really difficult at a stage that I went up to the tourist information point in town to get details about everything imaginable. There was a couple in front of me that were painfully awkward at explaining what they wanted so it took quite a while to return.

When I did return, the girls had been asked to come to the ‘kids show’ on the beach at noon. They all said yes but when the time actually came, they were all asked over again so they had to. When I arrived with all my leaflets and documents, the girls were playing a game with tiny children, throwing a coin into a bowl from a certain distance. I kept out of it until it was mentioned that you get free drinks at happy hour if you win. Setting aside my stuff, I got up and joined in, declaring that my name was Lorenzo (getting several chuckles from the locals, and the girls) and missed all my shots horribly. Thankfully, one of our girls won and she won herself a non-alcoholic drink for just herself…false advertising.

I took this time to lay all the cards on the table and let everyone pick what to do with the options that were presented to them. It was still difficult to decide but finally we all made a decision to rent a boat for half a day as it was now past 12pm. We went up to the boat rental place and they needed an hour or so to get it ready for us. We took this time to split into two groups – one to go back to the flat and get some snacks and drinks, and the other to go to the shop and get, well the exact same thing really. With all our food and drinks, we got on the boat, got a quick demonstration and were off into the lake.

The lake wasn’t as crystal clear as it was in Croatia, but it still looked awfully inviting and the sun was making it a whole lot better. I fixed the radio and tuned into a random station that was playing some heavy beats on the boat. We listened and partied to this until we found a nice place to anchor the boat and dive in. We did repeated this driving and swimming pattern for the rest of the day, not wanting to go that far away because we had to pay for the petrol, and we also had to drive back later anyway so would take longer.

We all had a go at diving in together and taking selfies, lots of pictures of the valley and we all had a go at skinny dipping. We even did one of the classic photos – you know the one when the girls go ‘tops off’ and all pose with their back to the camera – which literally took half an hour to get right. Of course I had to take the picture as I’m not a girl but every picture I took, someone wasn’t looking ‘on point’ or a boat was driving past us and everyone hit the deck. Thankfully we got a couple of hundred that they could choose from later and we were able to go back to the port with, and I emphasise, all our phones this time.

When we disembarked, we needed to go back to the rental shop to pay for the fuel consumption. We had only used 4 litres so it only cost €7! We were expecting a lot more and so was the girl working there. She asked us where we actually went, did we go far? Obviously, she doesn’t know how good we are at conserving our fuel. 

Back at our apartment, we used the swimming pool for a while whilst others were cooking dinner – we were planning to do a meal a night each. My girlfriend was teaching me how to properly dive, and I managed to dive right into the floor of the pool and have a nice golf ball bruise on my head. I walked it off though. After dinner, we tried to open a bottle of wine, but with no corkscrew yet again, it proved very difficult. We did get it open, but everyone wasn’t bothered to move or so engrossed in their phones that we just had an early night. Before I went to sleep, I checked for our new interrail passes (we needed two passes because we were gone for so long, and we would have to change them in 2 days time so I thought I would have a quick check) but for the second time on this trip, I couldn’t find them.

I searched my whole bag, my girlfriend’s bag and the whole apartment but couldn’t find them this time at all. I had to ring my mum and explain to her the situation and it kind of put a damper on my mood. I hate losing things and it was very unlike me to do so. There must have been some explanation. I thought of all possibilities but it wasn’t until I was in bed thinking that I realised where they had to be – Florence. Using my bank account as confirmation, I knew I definitely had it there so either they were left behind during the big rush to leave, or my cleaner friend stole them when he was in the apartment by himself waiting for us to return from the shop. I text the landlord and told her where to look and told my mum that we would have to wait until tomorrow before we do anything. Hopefully it would be good news from Firenze.