Back beneath the water

[dolorosa_12]

I've been somewhat absent from these parts for the very best of reasons — a holiday in Italy with my mother. We enjoyed our trip to the Amalfi coast so much last year that we wanted more of the same — good food, interesting and challenging walking, daily swimming, all in beautiful places. Our trip to Amalfi had been organised by a company that specialises in hiking holidays, in which people travel from hotel to hotel on foot on routes organised by the company (but generally on designated walking tracks used by various people), and the company organises people's bags to be transferred from hotel to hotel separately. We organised a similar thing, but with a different company, around Lake Como, over three days, starting in Varenna and ending in Como with stops overnight in Menaggio and Bellagio.

The hotels were lovely, the food was excellent (it's really hard to eat badly in Italy to be honest), and we swam every day either in the lake or in hotel swimming pools, but the organisation and walking itself left a lot to be desired. This company was a bit chaotic and unreliable (for example the pack of material such as maps, baggage tags enabling our bags to be conveyed to each hotel by taxi drivers was not delivered in time and had to be sent by FedEx to our first hotel), and the walks they'd organised were wildly uneven in terms of difficulty. (For example the first walk was close to 16km up and down steep mountain paths made of loose large stones — we bailed after about 4km due to the heat — whereas the second walk was listed as '6.5 miles' but would be lucky to have been 6.5km and was essentially a flat path along the lake used by old ladies walking their dogs.) My mum and I are pretty confident and resilient hikers, and were underwhelmed by the overall quality of the walks. I think it didn't help that the company was based in the US and possibly had never done any of the walks themselves, whereas last year's Amalfi organisers were based in the UK, had a team in Italy, and had members of staff who had done all the hikes whose experiences and suggestions were included in the instruction material. So, overall I liked the places we went to, but didn't much enjoy the main purpose of the trip: the hiking itself.

Our time around Lake Como was bookended by a couple of days in Milan at each end. Both Mum and I had been there before and felt no need to do particularly touristy things again, so we spent most of our time walking around, eating in restaurants and cafes, and swimming laps in a beautiful and venerable indoor swimming pool — the oldest in the city.

Our time in Italy was affected by a rail strike, and also a strike of airport staff that meant our original flight back to the UK was cancelled and the only available bookings directly to the UK were for three days later, so things ended with a rather desperate search for flights (including some ridiculous options such as a 21-hour flight with a stopover in Qatar, a flight with three changes and an overnight stay in Greece, etc), in which the best available option ended up being returning to London via Helsinki (and an overnight stay in an airport hotel). So the last 48 hours of the trip ended up being spent in a Milan laundromat while Mum washed her clothes and we both talked for hours with a young Mexican backpacker who was also washing all his clothes (sample anecdote: 'I went out in London with a bunch of Germans from my hostel and we almost got stabbed'), then in an endless chaotic queue at the airport with a bunch of confused and irritated Finnish people, then in Helsinki airport, with two three-hour Finnair flights that were certainly not originally part of the plan! I did get to bring home salty licorice, though, which was an unexpected and welcome bonus. International travel is wonderful, surreal, and always full of the unexpected, that's for sure!

I do have a number of photos from the trip up on Instagram — if you have an account, you'll be able to see them there at ronnidolorosa. All in all, it was a weird and wonderful time.

Comments

[lirazel]

I've so enjoyed seeing your Instagram pictures, and now hearing about the trip too! I'm very sorry about the digitization, but I'm glad that the rest of it was lovely!

[dolorosa_12]

Thank you! It was a good trip, on balance, but there were several very stressful things that made elements of it difficult. In general, though, it's hard to be too annoyed if one is lucky enough to travel internationally, eat amazing food cheaply, and swim daily in beautiful places!

[lirazel]

In general, though, it's hard to be too annoyed if one is lucky enough to travel internationally, eat amazing food cheaply, and swim daily in beautiful places!

Haha, yes! I am glad you could enjoy those things!

[goodbyebird]

That's such a cool idea for an arranged trip, I'll have to keep that in mind for me and my mom :)

I'm sorry this trip wasn't well planned out. May you find comfort in the salty licorice.

[dolorosa_12]

My mum hates sitting still, and loves hiking (but also loves comfort and things like hot showers), so this is a good way to ensure a holiday that incorporates all those things. I definitely wouldn't recommend this specific company, though, they were wildly disorganised. The people who ran the Amalfi hiking holiday last year were incredible, and I'd recommend them in an instant, though.

You can do this kind of holiday without a company planning the trip (I've done this several times with my mum in the UK, once in Germany, and once in Norway), but then you either have to stay in a single place and go out for day hikes, or you have to carry all your belongings in a backpack, which limits how much you can take.

May you find comfort in the salty licorice.

I most definitely will!

[yarnofariadne]

It sounds (and looked on Instagram) like a beautiful trip - shame about the organisation and the difficulties travelling home! I hope the licorice eases the pain.

[dolorosa_12]

I was definitely very lucky to be able to go to such wonderful places, and the trip overall was fun, just marred by some bad luck and bad organisation. And honestly Helsinki airport isn't that bad a place to end up, even if it wasn't originally part of the plan!

[vriddy]

That sounds like such a great idea for a trip. Sorry to hear that the company didn't pull it off well though, that's super disappointing. Hungry for Italian food, now...!

[dolorosa_12]

It was wonderful in general, and I guess the lesson learnt is that if you outsource most of the organisation, you can't complain when the organisation is poor...

Hungry for Italian food, now

Honestly, me too, still.

[isis]

Aw, we "just missed you" (by a month) - in early June we did an organized bicycle trip from Lago Del Garda to Lago Maggiore, stopping at all the lakes along the way. It was run by an Irish company and also suffered from not having really intimate knowledge of the terrain. But then we went to the Dolomites and did a self-guided trip set up by a local company, and it was fantastic, really great trails pitched for our level of experience and fitness, and excellent hotels to stay in.

Your pictures are lovely!

[dolorosa_12]

Oh wow, that would have been amazing if it were properly organised! There's certainly a lot of good cycling in that area — I saw lots of other cyclists around Lake Como. The self-guided trip sounds a lot better, and I'm glad you enjoyed it. It really makes a difference being able to end the day in a nice hotel.

[chestnut_pod]

It sounds like you got a lot out of the trip, bad logistics on all sides be damned! Honestly, that's very admirable!

[dolorosa_12]

All in all it was a lot of fun, just a lot of irritating stuff around the edges which will eventually recede into funny anecdotes with time.

[svgurl]

That is definitely a great reason to be absent! The trip sounds like a lot of fun - it is too bad that the organization wasn't up to par but it seems like there were many nice parts too, which is good. :D

[dolorosa_12]

It really was lovely, and to be honest what I will remember is the nice holiday with my mum, not the bad organisation.

[scintilla10]

Too bad about the organization / quality of the company - otherwise, that kind of trip sounds wonderful, and what a beautiful part of the world to visit.

[dolorosa_12]

It really was lovely, and to be honest the good parts about the trip far outweighed the bad. And yes, a beautiful place to visit.

[trepkos]

Kind of funny (only because he wasn't REALLY stabbed) that the Mexican came to London and nearly got stabbed, when one gets warned about such dangers in Mexico.

[dolorosa_12]

He actually made that specific connection ('everyone thinks Mexico is really dangerous, but nothing like that ever happened to me there') so the irony was not lost on him either.

[trepkos]

I've always felt that Jersey at night was pretty dangerous - never had half as much trouble in London as I've had here.