At the risk of putting something on the internet with an anachronistic title like "Bastard Foreign Holidays", which might well get me cancelled for 70's-style parochial xenophobia and labelled a UKIP-voting gammon, can I just say from the outset that I don't give a toss. I'm not about to pour scorn on foreigners, foreign countries or foreign cultures. And there, I used the word 'foreign' so many times in one short sentence that I've probably triggered the sort of awkward discomfort that might send the easily offended to seek solace in their safe space or send a protest tweet So, please rest assured, that all I am about to write are a few amusing things that went wrong on holidays that just happened to be in a different country to the one in which I reside and which were otherwise hugely enjoyable experiences.
Sicily
One of the most appealing aspects of holidaying in Sicily was the opportunity to visit the villages where 'The Godfather' was filmed - Savorca and Forza d'Agro. Having looked at photos of these unspoilt tourist attractions, I agreed with my wife to go ahead and book us a week in a beautifully remote area, with a plan to hire a car and visit the Godfather villages on the journey from the airport.
Soon after booking, I became aware that Sicily is somewhat hilly. To call it mountainous might be an exaggeration, but it's certainly far from flat. Let's call them 'big hills'. There isn't anywhere flat in Sicily. Now, I have a real trouser-soiling fear of driving (or being driven) up steep, winding roads, especially those with a bit of a drop. Not just sheer drops, that any logically minded person can sense some risk with. But even slightly steep drops, which send my brain into panic mode, as I expect to hit a car coming too fast down a blind bend, or to find myself forced to reverse around such a hellishly designed chicane and end up careering to a horrendous death below. I thought I should best check the location of the Godfather villages to make sure the car journey to reach them wasn't going to involve any such teasing with mortality.
It was difficult to be sure from the maps that I looked at. The villages were each perched high on a hill. So, I searched on You Tube to see if anyone had ever filmed a car journey up or down the routes. They had. "Driving down from Forza d'Agro, Sicily". It's a horror show. The hills were so steep, they seemed unnatural, like giant mounds of rock plonked on the island, as if large meteors had fallen to earth and the locals in their madness had decided to climb them and build houses and a church on top. I watched the filmed view from a car as it drove down and down and down and round and round and round from the summit of this ludicrously high village, and the temperature in my toes fell below zero, leaving them frozen in a tightly curled position and at risk of dropping off from frostbite.
Needless to say, despite my wife's huge disappointment, we did not visit either Godfather village. The chance to do so was an offer I COULD refuse. When we got to Sicily, the winding, steep route over a hill to the vineyard-located B&B that we'd booked was relatively bearable compared to Forza d'Agro. A more moderate level of fear, but one that I was keen to avoid for most of the week. Therefore, on the first day, we went for a walk rather than a drive. Just to check out the local area.
We followed a track heading north towards the coast and part of this ran alongside a field of goats, guarded by 3 aggressive dogs. They stalked us from behind a fence, barking like those Rottweiler devil dogs that guard the grave to Damien's jackal mother in 'The Omen'. The fence was the only thing preventing the fear that had built up inside me from flowing out of my back end. Just as I remarked that it was lucky the dogs couldn't get out, the fucking dogs got out. There was a hole in the fence. They came towards us, in my mind ready for the kill. My wife's ability to contain her fear whilst mine disabled me, led to her assertively shouting to the dogs to go 'AWAY' and this unnerved them long enough for us to get past them.
The problem then was how to get back. My wife failed to reassure me that the dogs wouldn't attack, should we return that way, so I suggested we keep walking and visit the 'Sanctuary of the Black Madonna' in Tindari and the Roman remains next to it. Roughly a 90 minute walk. And from there we expected to get a cab back. The long walk in the hot Sicilian sun was definitely worth it, as the church and the Roman site and the view from the coastal hill on which they were both perched was amazing. However, this was a remote part of Sicily on a religious feast day, as we found out, and there was no taxi, no bus, no way to get back to the B&B except to walk. Either 90 minutes back past the dogs or a longer route by road that would follow the way we'd driven in on the previous day. I estimated 2 hours of walking along the dog-free (and death-free) road route. It turned out to be 3 and a half hours. In the heat. Up and down hills. Like a fucking death march. My wife cursed my fear of dogs and incompetence in calculating time from speed and distance.
Cyprus
Because the first villa holiday we'd had in Cyprus was the most perfect of weeks, we booked a fortnight a few years later. In many ways, this was just as wonderful. Many, but not all ways. There was a spell halfway through the holiday, when the pool went green and was out of action for several days until that problem was sorted, the filters cleaned, something like that. This problem may have been the cause of my daughter getting an ear infection. This led to visit number one to the local village doctor's surgery. She was prescribed anti-biotics and told not to swim for a number of days. Visit number two to the doctor was for my son, whose wisdom teeth decided to give him hell, so he was on painkillers.
But these challenges proved surmountable, because I have very resilient children. Which means I feel ashamed to admit that my own experience on the holiday highlighted my relative lack of resilience. On one of the first nights, as I crossed a rooftop terrace from the main part of the house to our bedroom, I caught site of something alive on the inside of the door. Without showing any curiosity to examine what it was, it was too dark to properly see anyway, I dashed inside to grab the thickest book I could swiftly find and I returned to throw it at the moving shape on the door.
It turned out to be a spider, the size of a child's hand, thick and hairy and bloody scary. Fortunately it was now dead. I made sure with a few more whacks with the book. And yes, I know, you shouldn't kill animals, but there is a statute of limitations on that rule, to do with size, situation and how much you're shitting yourself with terror. The next morning, I investigated the rest of the rooftop terrace to see if there were any more spiders. I found two others. Both dead, but clearly, this suggested an infestation. I could better examine the spider corpses in the daylight and looked them up on the internet. They were European tarantulas. European tarantulas like to come inside houses, the internet told me. And so every day for rest of the fortnight, without sharing any information of the tarantula attack with my family, I restlessly and nervously stayed circumspect, especially at night, expecting more spiders everywhere I looked. Fortunately, none arrived, so gradually my fears subsided, until the very last day when I spotted one inside the house. I have never been so pleased to leave such a beautiful villa in such a beautiful part of such a beautiful country. From that point onwards, holidays have been in cold countries, tarantula-free.
Other minor mishaps
I never went on a foreign holiday whilst growing up, not unless you count Ireland. And at 17 and 18, I visited New York, which isn't exactly culturally alien. So, I became an adult without the necessary experience of wild dogs or wild spiders to prepare me for the dangers of hot environments abroad. For that reason, I was ill-prepared for our first villa holiday as a family. This was Portugal. By this point, we had (before having children) holidayed in both Tunisia and Turkey and got lucky in terms of insects, dysentery or other potential disasters. So, I didn't think to prepare for a mosquito raid on my first night in Portugal. I counted over 40 bites by the morning, most of them on my face, many of them so large and disfiguring that I looked like the Elephant Man.
Another year, we booked late and had less money, so we opted for a cheap house rental in northern France. This was the only time that I wanted to turn back and head home immediately on arrival. We'd been spoiled by villa holidays to Portugal and Majorca. Now we were in a rain-sodden copse off a main road, in a damp and uncomfortable house that looked like an old couple had just died in it. And to cap it all, there was a hornet's nest right outside our bedroom window. On balance, I would take killer dogs or hand-sized tarantulas over hornets any day. In the end we stayed, but it turned out to be the only holiday we've had where there just weren't enough positives to outweigh the crap aspects.
So, there you go. Not exactly 'bastard foreign holidays', more like 'bastard bits of foreign holidays', because outside of these experiences, we have been very lucky indeed. But you know me, why would I write about the good times, when the bad times are so much funnier?
