Bad weather and fab weekends away....

Europe
July 6th 2010

Published: July 6th 2010

The last six weeks have just flown by … but that’s probably because I’ve been jetting off here, there and everywhere, catching up with friends and family.

It first started back in mid May when Ian and I flew to Manchester to spend the weekend in Burnley celebrating his mum and dads Golden Wedding Anniversary. It was a big weekend for all the family as not only were we celebrating their anniversary, but they also decided to renew their vows. We all had a lovely weekend celebrating with family, friends, good food, plenty of alcohol and also plenty of tears - although these were mainly shed by the men!! The celebrations were very emotional for all, mainly due to Jacks amazing recovery.

Unfortunately (or fortunately for some - mainly me) our Sunday afternoon flight was delayed due to more Volcanic Ash eruptions. We couldn’t get a flight out of the UK for at least 48 hours so we had to spend two more days in the UK, much to the delight of my stomach as it enabled me to enjoy a delicious fish and chip lunch before heading back to the airport!?

I then managed to spend a whole week at home (in Germany). We had Ian’s brother and his family visit in their camper van for the weekend and amazingly enough they also brought the good weather with them. The first bit of sun I had seen for weeks!! We showed them the delights of Bavaria including the longest toboggan run in Germany, we climbed some big mountains and even managed to find our local “winter bar” in one of our favourite ski resorts (complete with leather sofa’s outside all year round).

Our guests left on the Monday and on the Tuesday I flew back to Stanstead to spend some time with my friends and family. The week just flew by as I spent time with friends and family. The highlights of this week were eating some proper English pub grub, a proper curry and London sightseeing in the rain. A special thanks goes out to Andy for reminding me that I can stay up until 4am even at my age (although I suspect playing on the Wii and downing an entire bottle of Limencello helped somewhat)!??

On the Wednesday I flew back to Memmingen - this time with no delays. The following week flew by with a weekend trip to somewhere in the region of Frankfurt where Ian and I went on a Walking and Dining tour of several Wineries. The general idea being that you have a five course meal over the duration of the night and each course is served in a different Winery. We were picked up from our hotel at 5.30pm and eventually got back at 12.30am, so it was money well spent. In between each course you had a guided tour of the local town while you walked onto the next Winery. Not that we could understand a word of it as you may well know, our German is far from fluent!

5 courses / 2 wines per course / repeated refills = shed loads & fairly drunk
(that’s not including the wine we had in the hotel prior to dinner)

From there Ian and flew out to Portugal for six days with some friends/client’s of his. We arrived on the Thursday and unfortunately so did the bad weather! The evening we arrived we sat in a restaurant watching the people outside walk by in jumpers, coats and umbrellas as the weather got progressively worse. Well - it was the best excuse to visit the cocktail bar after the restaurant. Although some of us do know how to take it easy ….. after several (ie. 4/5) B52’s the guys went onto drinking B54’s and B57 (for those of you that haven’t heard of those last two drinks, neither has anyone else as they were making them up at this time)!? €100 later and we left the cocktail bar to go to another bar with a very lively band. Several hours later, with several dances under our belts, several more drinks inside our bellies and with Ian falling asleep it was finally time to go back to the villa.

While I had a nice lie in the following morning to recover from a slight hangover ….. Steve had to go the airport to pick up the girls while Ian had to chair a conference call at 7am!???? After the conference and several more hours of sleeping Ian did admit to not really knowing what he’d said in during the call!!

The sun eventually came out in Portugal and we enjoyed a couple of days lazing in the sun, either by the pool or down on the beach. All in all we had some very good food, nice wine and good company; it was a lovely long weekend.

Back to Germany and we had only a couple of days to unpack and wash our clothes before packing our weekend bags to head off to Lake Garda in Italy. We drove down to Lake Garda (it’s only 4 hours from our house via Austria) to meet up with some friends of ours from the UK.

On the journey through the mountain pass the rain was coming down fast but luckily by the time we had reached Lake Garda the weather had reached 24C and was sunny and warm. We spent a pleasant evening with our friends enjoying a BBQ, wine and a general chit chat.

The next morning the weather was warm but not exactly sunny. So come early lunch time we had decided to take a walk into the local town. Shortly after we had set off it gently started to rain, within about 5 mins the rain had set in extremely heavy, after about 6 mins the rain was absolutely pelting it down and no amount of umbrellas or waterproof coats were about to keep us dry. We took shelter under some trees but to no avail. After about 8 mins hail stones the size of golf balls were being thrown at us from the heavens above!? And did you realise that hailstones the size of golf balls actually hurt when they hit your feet (especially if you are only wearing flip-flops!!). Anyway, for some strange reason we decided to continue our walk into town … we got as far as the next camp site where we found shelter under a small marquee. Not that it actually turned out to be much of a shelter as the water was coming in thick and fast and in the end, those not standing on the chairs were paddling in ice cold water past their ankles.

After the rain had subsided a little we decided to continue our walk. Eventually making it into the nearest town, absolutely drenched and having wadded through gushing torrents of water rushing from the land into the sea. Drenched to the bone we decided to descend onto some unsuspecting restaurant for a late lunch, with the aim of drying out a little (thank god for hot air hand dryers - which I stood under for about half an hour trying to dry my clothes).

After a couple of hours for lunch, hot drinks to warm us up and then some alcoholic beverages to work up some courage to go back out into the rain to make our way home …. Ian (god bless him) decided to borrow umbrellas and waterproofs coats and then volunteered to walk all the way back to the campsite on his own to pick up his car and then to make two trips back to the restaurant to ferry us all back. He certainly turned out to be the hero of the day!?

Come the Sunday the weather still wasn’t the beautiful sunshine we had hoped for so we packed up early and decided to drive home ….. I love Italy, but not in the rain.

So … that’s my eventfully last few weeks. Weather permitting; we had some very enjoyable times with friends and family. But it did leave us reeling for some lovely hot summer weather. Which has finally arrived … we have now been able to spend some time on our local beach (bit of grass by the lake) and develop a subtle tan.

Long live the German summer months!?

Bad weather and fab weekends away....

Copyright Notice: All Rights Reserved