Well, we had a great time in Sirmione, Lake Garda.

On dad’s advice, we took the wheelchair. It was a good move, even though we only used it at the airports. Paris Charles de Gaulle is immense, and there is nee way we would have made connecting flights without it.

The weather wasn’t brilliant. I think we managed 1.5 days of sun out of the 6 days we were there. But it didn’t feel like it. But it was still t-shirt weather throughout.

I’ll mostly let the pictures do the talking, but here are some key points I remember about the holiday.

kp walked a LOT. She must have done half a mile a day minimum. Her pain broke through quite a lot, and we had to ramp up the patches, codeine and diclofenac this week. She didn’t quite get as bad that she wanted to take a morphine tablet. We were at 250ug worth of fentanyl patches for the majority of the holiday, with multiple codeine and diclofenac during the day as well.

The hotel was called The Grand Hotel Terme and was in the perfect spot for views. We had a corner room and one window looked over the castle, the other over the Lake, although for the first night we were in a different room with a terrace, but this involved steps (as well as the lift), so they kindly moved us.

Here is the view out of our new bedroom.

Day 1, we mostly stayed around the hotel. The hotel was one of 3 around Sirmione that had naturally hot spa water. It came out of the ground at 70′C, and filled a pool, the net temperature being 38′C. It was gorgeous, but STANK to high heaven of sulphur and all the other volcanic stuff. It was beautiful to be in, and we went in every day at least once. Here is a picture of kp in her hotel gown and then one of her in the huge hotel corridors.

Day 2, we went to Garda on the boat. We went on the fast boat (20 minutes), and returned on the slow boat (1hr 15mins). Here are some pictures from Garda.

Day 3, we walked around Sirmione old town. It is beautiful, very olde worlde and lots of wildlife around. We saw Swans with cygnets, some wild duck-like creature sitting on 2 eggs, and later we saw the same creature (different one), with 4 little baby versions that kept jumping on the mum’s back for a ride. Dead cute.

Day 4, we took a boat trip around Sirmione Peninsula with a funny tour guide. He knew enough english to say the price of the tour and to do his spiels. He prefaced EVERYTHING he said with the word “Sorry”. We would be sitting there, saying nowt and then all of a sudden, he would turn around and say……

Tour Guide :- “Sorry, disizda vundafulpoin awish dee spawaters ender dee leck”.

We couldn’t understand much of him and kp kept asking me what he said. I just told her what I thought he had said.

Day 5, can’t remember. Oh yes – massage day. We treat ourselves to an hour’s japanese massage each. It was gorgeous, very special, and so it should be at £50 a pop !
Day 6, we had met a couple earlier in the week called Anne and Ronnie. She was 67, and he was 70+ and they both hailed from Belfast.. He had a very bad back. And lo and behold every time we met them we heard the latest about Ronnie’s baaaaaaaaaack (Belfast accent). We knew all about his medication and how many tablets he had taken that day. Between ourselves, we called them Mr and Mrs ‘brufen (after Ibuprofen, the painkiller). They tipped us off about there being a market at Bardolino, so we went there on the last day. Fast boat there and back. It was heaving and we found it very hard going.

Day 7 saw us return home. We had to be up at 3.30am to start the day’s travelling. It was a long delay, with a delay at Charles de Gaulle. Here is kp falling asleep in her wheelchair.

It was a cracking holiday, VERY relaxing.

Marie had stayed home looking after the dogs. The house was like new when we returned and she had just cooked a Chicken for fresh roast chicken sandwiches. Gorgeous. Thanks so much Marie – you are a star !

It’s Sunday as I write this. 10:49am. kp is still asleep, and Marie has just phoned. Karen’s dad died overnight. I think he had had cancer for a while. She wasn’t very close to him, but you never know with kp how she will react. It’s her dad after all.