I have been very privileged to write a guest article in this good, sorry great, blog I stumbled across a couple of months ago and now regularly look forward to reading! Firstly let me introduce myself as Tim one of Lauren’s colleagues and English language coach!
Whilst Lauren and Nick were braving the Artic climbs of
The holiday started very badly after being delayed for 7 hours at London Gatwick airport. However, I spent the time at the airport wisely by watching rugby (this is a game similar to American Football only we don’t wear girly pads or rest every 2 minutes!) and using the new Dyson hand driers! Wow is all I can say!
We finally got to our hotel at 4am and after a couple of hours sleep got up ready to hit the water for 9am. The resort we were staying was wholly owned by a British company called Mark Warner and catered for activity holidays (sailing, kayaking, windsurfing, tennis and mountain biking to name but a few activities on site) and was basically a British compound with British guests and British staff (except the catering and housekeeping staff).
As one of the sailing instructors commented we weren’t “the usual people” that go on a Mark Warner holiday. How right she was! We were the youngest there by a long way and at 25 I was practically a baby. There were also a group from a singles travel agency which were also very weird. Without being too rude I can see why most of them are single! These included a guy who dressed up in a yellow suit complete with leopard print cuffs and a wig and many people dancing like that embarrassing uncle at a wedding.
Anyway as we are both keen sailors the main reason for the trip was to get some hours on the water. This involved a strict regime of being ready to go sailing at 9am until 5.30pm and then ‘socialising’ until the very early hours. The free wine at dinner was a recipe for disaster with many a stagger back up to the 5th floor each night but we still made it up and after a quick dive into the sea we were ready to go.
We had a great week and had lovely hot sunshine everyday and the wind wasn’t too bad. As the demographic of the guests was somewhat elderly we were pretty much the only ones using the boats and had pick of what we wanted. We got to know the instructors pretty well and they gave us endless stick all week for taking our own buoyancy aids (BAs). The reason we did was a tactical sunbathing one as both Sarah and I have nice small BAs to allow for a better tan. However, I now have a nice tan line in the shape of a BA.
I would like to put something in this section about how we embraced the Italian culture and did some touristy bits. However, the furthest we got was to the shop up the road to buy postcards! We did see some of the country on the transfer back to the airport but apart from that the focus was on getting as much time sailing, windsurfing and kayaking as possible.
Hopefully you all (sorry, y’all) enjoyed this post and you never know I might be invited back again… TTFN
3 comments:
Tim: Quick American English language tip - for Lauren and Nick it's "YINS" not "Y'ALL" - y'all is southern twang, while yins is a native Pittsburgh greating. :)
You do get to come home with Lauren and Nick? Jan
Laura, I haven't attempted to introduce them to pittsburghese yet, I'm having a hard enough time with basic American! For example, can you believe that when I talk about it being 'fall' here, I get a blank look and then a 'oh, you mean autumn.' They're not ready for yinzer-speak! :-)
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