Day 23 – Acqui Terme

In our actual plan at the start, we hadn’t planned to come here at all, but having spent one less day in Budapest and after leaving Naples a day earlier, we had two days to do something. This was one of the options, and probably the best one when you think about it. After having a reasonable lie in, we were taken in to see the market in town today. The market takes up the whole town and basically everything closes for it.

There were so many cheap things (awful quality) but some had potential. We even saw a dog in a pram being taken around the stalls (that’s a first). Acqui Terme means something like hot spa, so it was only right that we got to see the hot springs, one of which was just around the corner of the market, in a large courtyard. It was very hot, yet smelled a lot.

When the girls had finished looking around, we bought vegetables for dinner tonight (us guests were going to cook) and then we all went home, after having a coffee stop in a cafe. We needed to find somewhere to stay in Lake Garda and using the house iPad, I searched numerous places and possibilities. I found one apartment that was perfect for us and even had a shared pool. I enquired but when he replied, I had to say that we were sorry, it is too expensive for us. Well, he replied saying “Is it still too expensive if I take €100 off for you?”. Nope, we took the deal and ran.

Having that weight off our shoulders, the only thing left to do was to plan what we were doing for the rest of the day – Wine Tasting. Because we couldn’t all fit into the car to visit a proper vineyard, we had to make do with the cellar in town. As we were getting ready to leave, closing doors and turning off appliances. I accidentally ripped out the wall socket where the TV was plugged in. I managed to get it back in and screwed it on using a swiss army knife. You couldn’t even tell that anything happened.

The town was completely changed from this morning, no stalls and no evidence that they were even here. The wine tasting place was underground with 4 or 5 large rooms. We had a look around, checking out the bottles, prices and percentages (as you do) before selecting a couple to try. Personally, the two that we did try were not my favourite – the first one was very dry and the second one was too sweet, basically fruit juice – but we got a bottle of each regardless, possibly to enjoy in Lake Garda.

Before going home, we stopped at an ice cream parlour that sold brioch. I had never heard of this but I suppose it tasted alright. The brioch had one or two scoops of ice cream in it and you ate it like a burger. Something new I suppose. All day we were conscious about the weather forecast because only two fields down from the house, there was an aircraft runway and apparently they did sky diving. Three of the five of us wanted to do this but we couldn’t ring until after 4pm. When it was time, we couldn’t do it (much to the relief of my mother) because it was closed for ‘old people’ or something like that. Retirement day I think it was called. It was only around €26 and we made a promise that we would come back to do it, especially at that price as usually it’s more than 5 times that!

With nothing else to do, the girls started working on dinner. I wasn’t allowed to help so I chilled outside with a beer. The girls slagged me about how I was in my element etc… but I was, I could have stayed here all summer! Dinner was lovely as usual and we sat outside until the storm came. Except that it didn’t come, it remained clear and cloudless all night, allowing us to star gaze and watch the sky. We never realised how cool it was until then: staring at stars you know are literally forever away, what is out there, the moving lights – either planes, satellites or just stars moving that was causing controversy between us – and how it is possible to find the constellations (we found it very hard).

In the distance, we could see lightning in the sky and after the old trick of counting between the light and sound, we worked out that it was in Visone, the town we went for dinner last night. There was something oddly satisfying about watching it from this distance, feeling safe in the comfort of the garden.

This place was probably one of the quietest places I have ever visited. The silence, the lack of any need to do something and the beautiful weather, made this a perfect getaway from just normal life – we were already sick of hearing the ambulance sirens in all the cities. This stop on our trip was essential our rest, thus the short blog today. We knew we had walked a lot in the cities up to now, and we knew that after Milan, we would be changing cities close to every second day so a few stress free days would be perfect. Before going to bed, my girlfriend realised that she was getting a cold sore. Usually she gets one if she is overly stressed, so I have no idea how she got one here!