Friday in Varenna

Those of you who are diligently reading will have realized that I have not written of last Friday – not one of my better days. The vaguely Manuelish (Fawlty Towers ) person who organizes breakfast is not comfortable with single guests. For the second morning in a row he asked me ‘2 or 4 people’ when I walked in – I relied ‘1’ in both English and Italian. He asked again ‘2 or 4’ . I started to get annoyed and told him, too loudly, in Italian and then English that I was traveling on my own. I should have laughed – certainly the other people already sitting were trying hard to hide their amusement. I sat down at a table set for one. Soon after another single person came in and the whole process started all over again. ‘Manuel’ got further confused when this new gentleman ( Ed) tried to explain that yesterday his wife was with him but she went home yesterday and so today he was on his own. He sat down on his own, then another guest ( an Australian named John) asked us both to join him and his wife (does this behaviour go with the name?). Ed and I both shifted our stuff while ‘Manuel’ was out of the room. When he returned, he was a bit put out!

After that I went for a walk to look at some gardens. One is attached to an old restored villa now used as a conference centre and the other to a hotel – Villa Cipresi. They were nice, but I was not really in the mood.

I then caught the boat to Bellagio – a nearby town on Lake Como. As my family know, buying presents for people ( and myself) causes me huge stress. I am not good at gambles and over the past few days have been starting to badly worry about what token I could buy for family members. Bellagio has lots of nice gift shops but I could not find anything that I was sure was right. I had decided to buy myself some gloves in Milan months ago, so I wasnot thinking of me. I struggled very hard not to get upset looking at everyone else walking around with lots of parcels –if they could decide why couldn’t I? - seems totally ridiculous writing it down now but that’s how it was. I went back to Varenna and needed to get money out ( to pay the hotel which only accepts cash despite wanting a credit card number to secure the booking). The 2 banks are about 1 km apart and for several reasons I walked backwards and forwards several times. I was not impressed with either the banks ( sometimes it seems that banks will only give you E250, despite how much more you want – but the message says something about a link failure when you ask for more ) or me ( I muddled my passwords trying different cards, not something I usually do) . I decided I deserved an icecream , so that was nice.

The day did end well though. ‘Manuel’ ‘s boss organizes people for dinner – she has less tables than rooms so puts couples together. She has 1 table for 6 that she put me plus 2 couples on. The other 4 were all from USA - a couple and 2 female friends. The lady, Pauline, who was sitting next to me was lovely. It had come out in conversation that both our husbands had died ( I hate, and try hard not to use, the n-less-window word) and some of her experiences and feelings were very similar to mine. So, in retrospect, not such a bad day at all.

PS The game I was watching is handball.