Later that same night… .. Lake Maggiore

I have previously written about our magnificent experience visiting the Piedmont region which is in North Western Italy. You can re-visit the original post here at https://richerfortravel.wordpress.com/2017/04/09/isola-madre-la-piratera-dinner/

Now, after recent experiences with kids, drama and chaotic craziness I want to tell the story of what happened later that same night…!

So, we left the story as our merry bunch of Trafalgar groupies arrived back on ‘dry’ land after our magical evening out on Isola Madre. There had been lots of laughs and a great time was had by all, even those who left our magnificent dinner spot feeling slightly ‘under the weather’, pardon the pun…

There was a party atmosphere brewing in the bar/dance floor area back at our hotel that perfectly matched the party vibe on our boat as we ‘rocked it’ back to shore. It looked like a brilliant opportunity to continue the fun we’d already started during our island evening.

John and Graeme drew the ‘short’ straw and got the job of ferrying the kids upstairs and off to bed. We DID (as was the case every morning on ‘tour’) have an early start the next morning as we were heading to our next fabulous destination. It was a good idea for the kids to get a good nights sleep after many busy days and more to come.

With three families travelling together, the usual scenario was that there were two double rooms per family in each hotel we stayed at.  The Stuart’s were lucky that their girls were old enough to share a room by themselves so their parents had their own room. The rest of us sorted the sleeping arrangements out so that one parent and one child were in each double room (and an extra child in one room for Team Hill). We weren’t quite confident enough to allow our kids to share their own room without parental ‘presence’. Little did the ladies know, as we danced and sang down in the hotel bar, that this was exactly what was playing out upstairs…

The slightly dodgy Italian DJ was pumping out some great dance hits and once an ABBA song or two were played, the tempo was amped up even more. There were wonderful lemon concoctions  (and plenty of OTHER drinks) to be had at the bar. There was singing (most of it bad but hilarious). It was, all in all, a great continuation of a ripper night. A proud and defining moment for all involved. Partying the night away in Italy!

I am pretty sure that an ABBA song was playing, as requested by us, as this photo was snapped….that is me, second from the right in the back of the photo. Happy days…….!

Eventually, some common sense prevailed and a few of us decided to head upstairs to try to get at least a few hours sleep. We had to have all our bags packed and out front of our hotel room doors at some un-Godly hour in the morning. Well maybe un-Godly is an exaggeration but 6am was still pretty early considering the amount of sleep us party-goers had managed to get.

I remember feeling tired but happy as I headed upstairs in the lift to our room(s). I was glad the kids had gone up early and were hopefully getting a good sleep so they were rested and ready for the day (and days) ahead.  I had both room keys (cards) with me and expected that I’d find John and the boys sound asleep in one of the HUGE beds that were in each room.

This was the sight that greeted me as I keyed into the first of our two rooms. This photo was clearly taken in daylight AND is a lot tidier when we’d inhabited it for a few nights BUT you get the point. This was a huge bed and I expected there to be three sleeping bodies in this bed. There was no-one.

After a quick peek in the bathroom, I quickly surmised that there was no-body here. Now peeking in the bathroom might seem like a little bit of a strange thing to do but it was known, earlier in the trip, for there to be suitcases stored in the bath….  Anything goes – so it was worth checking it out.  I keyed into our second room, expecting to find three slumbering boys in the bed. I only found one. Sprawled out, snoring happily away, in that huge expanse of a bed. Alone. No kids. Again, I checked the bathroom and found no-one in there. A mild, gnawing panic started to set in.

It was well after midnight. In a hotel. In Italy. Where the heck were the kids? Husband; check. Kids; missing in action. Oh dear, this couldn’t be good.

The exact details of what happened next are a bit foggy now, thanks to the mists of time that have elapsed between then and now. Or maybe that was just because of the amount of alcohol I had consumed that night. I was only a bit tipsy, though, in truth, and  certainly had my wits about me enough to know that two people were missing from their beds. MY two small people, in fact, aged 8 and 11 at the time.

Further investigation into the matter led me to wander down the hallway a bit, in the direction of one of Team Hill’s rooms.  I am not sure what led me to head down that way. After the initial shock of discovering that the kids were NOT where they were supposed to be, I may have been instinctively drawn to the end of the corridor where I could vaguely see light spilling out into the hallway from what looked to be an open door.

I can’t remember if I woke ‘said’ husband up or not at this point but I am sure that by the time I discovered the whereabouts of the kids, that he was woken and growled at in no uncertain terms. The kids, in the absence of fatherly supervision (fathers (x2) being SOUND ASLEEP in their own beds), decided to party on into the night too. There was music. There was loud television. There were iPads. There was jumping on beds. There was food and all manner of mess and there was chaos. And there were three little monkeys who should have been long ago tucked up in their beds asleep, let loose in an Italian hotel, having a wow of a time.

Thankfully none of them had decided that it would be a great idea to wander off downstairs into the hotel foyer, bar or pool areas, or worse still, wander off outside.  Thankfully no-one else had been drawn to the sound of the party and decided to go and check it out. Thankfully, I guess, nothing dreadful happened other than a few grey hairs acquired by a very cross mother.

I was left to wonder what may have happened if I’d decided NOT to head up to bed until much later. Would they have continued their shenanigans unchecked and unsupervised? Would someone have eventually complained about the noise or were they too far down the corridor to be heard by anyone (since the only adults in any sort of proximity were sound asleep?) Lots of questions and what if scenarios.

I guess we will never know. I guess we can be thankful that nothing bad did happen and that everyone was alright, albeit tired and more than a little bit cranky, the next morning. I guess the moral of the story is – well I will leave that one for you to figure out??!

The ‘What ifs’ thankfully morphed into the what ‘is’ which was that we all got moving safely the next morning and continued on with our wonderful trip. Thankfully. …