INFERNO VACATION PARADISO

My wife Barbara and I decided to celebrate my 75^th birthday by taking a five-day vacation on Lake Garda near Verona, Italy.  We selected the Hotel Leonardo da Vinci in Limone sul Garda, an area famous for its lemon trees and its inhabitants who live to ripe old ages, thanks to a genetic protein that dissolves their bad cholesterol.   “The perfect place,” I said, “for an old guy who doesn’t expect to see 76.”

How wrong I was.  This almost turned out to be “The Vacation from Hell”.

Normally, the drive from Vicenza to Limone would have taken about an-hour- and-a-half.  We figured two hours because it was a Sunday; so we expected heavy traffic with tourists scouting out their favorite Lake Garda sights.  And that was the case.  Traffic was very heavy until we passed the beautiful town of Salò.  But, as we looked for signs for the next major town, Gardone, we saw only signs reading Trento and “Tutti I Direzioni” (all other directions).  Figuring that meant “keep going this way”, we headed north to Trento – which is way north  -- and ended up half-way there (to Trento, that is, not Limone).  Realizing our mistake (but not very quickly), we turned around and headed back to Salò, where we finally saw signs for Gardone and we got back on the right road to Limone.  We got there after about a three hour drive, and we should have guessed that we were arriving at the gates of Hell.

The hint that this was hell came from two teenage boys who greeted us outside the hotel entrance.  They checked our names on the guest list, then offered us a drink.  And while we downed our glasses of water, they strapped blue plastic bands around our wrists, telling us the wristbands would identify us as hotel guests eligible to use all the facilities.  We commented that we felt more like we were hospital patients, but the boys just smiled and nodded their heads – probably saying, in their minds, “That ain’t even close to the truth, you poor souls.”

From there we went to the front desk to check in.  The clerk was helpfully polite and terribly confusing – the latter beginning with her description of   dining operations in the hotel’s three different restaurants: buffet-style here, sit-down service over there, and long-pants for the evening meal (but, of course, women didn’t have to wear long pants; mini-skirts up to their hoo-hahs was okay for them).  Then, the clerk drew us a map showing how we could get from the entrance parking lot to our room; she might just as well have told us to take six laps around the complex and call her in the morning .  Reading hotel clerks’ maps is not my specialty.

We didn’t go right to our room.  Very hungry after our  long drive to Limone, we decided to eat lunch first  (it was almost two o’clock in the afternoon).  The clerk said the outdoor poolside restaurant was still open.  So, we climbed two or three sets of stairs to get there and lined up at the buffet to get our pasta and mystery meat.  No problem .  Oh, except that the hotel seemed to have decided that most people like to stand up and eat off paper plates with plastic knives and forks; so they put only about three , maybe four,  dining tables around the pool.  With nowhere to sit, we threw away the knives and forks and tipped the food from the plates directly into our mouths.

Fully sated now and without the hotel clerk’s confusing map, we easily found where our room was situated, inspected it,  and drove from the parking lot to where we could park to unload our car.  We put our bags in Room-2118 in Blocco 2000 (pronounced BLOH-koh  doo-eh-MIL-leh) or Block-TwoThousand.  It turned out to be something like one of the levels of Dante’s Inferno. 

No problem getting the bags to the room;  but, when we got there, we couldn’t find the room key.  I thought  it might have dropped out of my pocket onto the car floor, but it wasn’t there.  Then, I remembered that, as we finished inspecting the room, I saw a place where the key must be hung to turn on the room’s electricity.  I had hung the key there and left it there as we walked out the door, which locked automatically when closed.

Now, I had to go back to the front desk and ask for another key.  But, before I did, I decided to put the car in its permanent parking place up the hill of the Leonardo complex.  I mean: WAY UP the hill.  I thought the car might not make it, but it did.  And as I walked back down to the hotel front desk, I thought, “Yeah, the car made it up that hill – WAY UP – but I’ll never make it when we have to get the car to drive back home; I’ll have to ask one of Limone’s long-living citizens to walk up there and get it for me.”

We hoped to put all these problems behind us by taking an afternoon swim.  No chance to do that in the outdoor pool; too many kids and other people there to allow us to do the lap-swimming we enjoy.   No problem – or so we thought  -- we’ll just go to the indoor pool.  Well, it was empty and just waiting for us to swim our laps…at least for ten minutes.  Then some teenagers came in to use the Jacuzzi.  No problem – or so we thought – we’re in the pool over here; there in the Jacuzzi over there.  At least for five minutes.  Then they decided to jump in the pool.  End of our lap-swimming .

Okay, so let’s do something else.  I brought my laptop computer along as a way for family and friends to send me Internet  birthday greetings, since we were out of their telephone range.  But I couldn’t bring up the Internet in our room.  So, before we went (almost) swimming , I asked the front desk for help, and the clerk said to bring my computer there and they’d see what they could do.  However, I also needed to bring the slip of paper they’d given me earlier with the “User Name and Password”.  No problem; I’d put that paper in the pocket of my swimsuit before we went swim….oops.  I checked the pocket, and the paper was still there, but it was soaked and in unreadable condition. 

Forget about it, I thought, and we went back to the room and got dressed for dinner.  What we found, then,  in the hotel’s indoor, buffet-style restaurant was another level of Dante’s Inferno:  complete chaos as the hungry diners rushed and bounced  from one serving site to another, spilling most of the food on the floor as they dodged and bumped and crashed into one another (and tripped over little children).  All because someone thought it would be fun to eliminate any orderliness from this process by setting up lines for each serving site.  It was sort of fun to watch it from a distance; but it was “HELL” trying to get through it all and finish our meal.

We were totally exhausted from that ordeal, but we still decided to see more of what the Hotel Leonardo da Vinci complex had to offer.  We crossed the road –a main highway, actually, where we had to be careful not to get run over by speeding cars or motorcycles – to see the hotel’s Villa Lucia beach restaurant, right on the lake.  Well, we saw it…sort of.  We had to walk down several sets of stairs, each about ten steps long, to get within sight of Villa Lucia.  What we could see was that there were several more flights of stairs to the restaurant and beach.  And what we thought was that we’d eventually have to walk up all those stairs and cross the highway again to get back to the hotel.  So, that was the end of that level of the Inferno.  Thank you, Mr. Alighieri (and you, too, Mr. Da Vinci).

Our first non-Inferno experience came with a good night’s sleep on Sunday.  And Monday breakfast in the buffet-style restaurant – they called it the Sala Leonardo – wasn’t as helter-skelter as the night before.   We even sat at a table with a nice view of Lake Garda.  “What’s happened here, “ I wondered, “have we passed from Hell to Purgatory?”

Nope.  We were back in the Inferno when we finished breakfast and went to the hotel lobby.  We stopped at a stand offering book and magazine exchanges: leave a book and take one away.  We had nothing to leave, so we took a Newsweek  magazine back to our room.  With the magazine in hand I went to the bathroom to do my business, expecting to read Newsweek’s feature article entitled “Psycho Polack”.  I thought it might be interesting, but I’ll never know.  The article – the entire magazine – was in Polish.  “Now there’s a level of Hell I’ll bet Dante never imagined, “  I thought, “a hotel with leisure reading material all in Polish.”   

Rather than take Polish lessons we tried another swim in the hotel’s indoor pool.  No teenagers there that morning and none that afternoon either.  And lunch at the outdoor pool’s buffet was relatively harmless.  We found a table, waited until the buffet line shortened, got our food, and ate.  The food was nothing great, but it sated our hunger.   The only Inferno-like experience here was the constant, loud music being pumped and bumped through loudspeakers and the instructions shouted through microphones by the youthful entertainment guides.  They were also in action in the evening , taking the children hotel guests through a series of dances on a small outdoor stage; but that was rather enjoying to watch.

There was special enjoyment Monday evening, however, when we sat down for dinner and were served in the hotel’s Sala Gioconda.  The headwaiter Johnny – not Gianni; he said his mother named him after the Olympic swimmer and movie Tarzan Johnny Weismuller – was an absolute gem.  Dante would never have put him in the Inferno.  The food was delicious, too, and it was a true joy to sit and be served rather than fight the buffet-style crowd (we could call them the buffeters).

Another surprise – two surprises, actually – at Tuesday morning breakfast.  We saw Johnny there and asked him if there were any brioche at the buffet.  He said there were none (hard to believe in Italy), but that he would get us some. Johnny jumped in his car, drove off to a local pasticceria, and returned with two brioche.  We had to eat them in the hotel bar, so the other “buffeters” couldn’t see we got something special.

The rest of Tuesday was pretty much like that: things approaching  Inferno levels, then changing direction for the good.  We were all alone in the indoor pool for both our morning and afternoon laps.  We had no trouble negotiating the buffet feeding troughs (actually, we cheated at lunchtime and brought our food from the outdoor pool back to our room).  All in all, it was a disappointing day for someone looking for a return to the Vacation Inferno.

Wednesday morning , my 75^th birthday, dawned dark and dreary, as clouds filled the sky and rain fell.  But the threat of Inferno quickly disappeared when  the hotel’s room service appeared with a surprise breakfast Barbara ordered the night before.  It started with champagne and just got better, as the sun appeared and we ate on our room’s terrace.  There were brioche, bread rolls, butter and jelly, scrambled eggs, ham, cheese, and caffe latte.  And Barbara topped it off with a birthday note that read in par:

Dearest Mike,

       Happy 75^th birthday!  Hope your day will be a very special one –

       as special as you have been to me all these years. . .We are so

       lucky to have celebrated half a century of your birthdays together. . .

       You enriched my life in many special ways and I thank you very 

       much for it and I love you very much. . .

                                                                  Barbara

I realized, then, that my wife had kept me from the Inferno for all these years and that neither Dante nor the Hotel Leonardo da Vinci could deny me a life in heaven with Saint Barbara.

      The rest of the day was perfect, including our first visit to Limone.  We walked along the lake with beautiful views to the mountains on the other side.

We bought some of the towns famous lemons and some fruit jellies, then  sat down at a local bar for a Spritz (Aperol and Prosecco over ice with a slice of – you guessed it – orange; oh, you guessed lemon?).  That evening we ate a sit-down dinner again in the Sala Gioconda (drinking the hotel’s complementary Spumante). 

Then we went outside to listen to a one-man band play some of our favorite old songs on the saxophone, clarinet, and guitar, accompanied by a computerized orchestra.  We asked if he could play the Eagles’ “Hotel California”.  “Hey,” he said, “this is the Hotel Leonardo da Vinci; we don’t play songs from other hotels.  Besides,” he added, “that song is about the Hotel from Hell: ‘. . .You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave.’”

We checked out of the Hotel Leonardo da Vinci Friday morning, leaving behind us all the bad thoughts about an Inferno.  We remembered only the good things about our vacation there (including a hotel clerk’s driving me WAY UP that hill to our car’s parking space).  We had spent five days in a virtual Paradiso and had spent a heavenly $1,400 for full board -- including all drinks, only the room service breakfast was extra -- for two persons. 

As we drove out of the parking lot, I looked up at the hotel façade and noticed that the sign read “H. Leonardo da Vinci”.  I thought to myself, “That’s almost like the lyrics of ‘Hotel California’: ‘…it could be H(eaven) or it could be H(ell).’”  I knew, of course, that the H. Leonardo da Vinci was pure Paradiso, not Inferno.