Hotel delle Rose, Monticelli Terme

– 10 April 2014 We stayed that night at Monticelli Terme, south of Parma. Took a bit of finding and when we did we knew at once from the moment we arrived that this hotel was going to be fun.

Among my travel possessions is a Best Western loyalty card, so when we were planning the trip to le Marche this time I looked at the Best Western website and saw this hotel near Parma and it seemed like a good price. I noticed that the hotel had a swimming pool too, which was another positive for us.

We drove in under the arched and ancient-looking wrought-iron hotel sign and were surprised to see that the car park was close-on full. People were sitting around on the benches outside the entrance of the hotel in their dressing gowns and sandals.

Into the spacious marble entrance area – we needed no reminding that we were in Italy and could be nowhere else – and checked in. ‘Is the pool open?’, I asked the man at reception after we had completed our formalities. ‘Yes’, he replied, ‘Would you like me to show you how to reach it?’ Whereupon he produced a map of the hotel complex, showing that there were in fact two pools, each controlled for temperature and water mineral content. And not only that there were Turkish baths and rooms set aside for all manner of therapies, that with our stops in Bellinzona and Lugano on our journey that day we were now too late to make use of, but the pools were open until seven.

The pool we chose was warm, but stinging on the eyes on account of the salts in the water. But you could swim a fair length and there was a separate hydro-massage pool that we sat in for a few minutes, and part of the main pool was geared towards people with disabilities, including being able to get a wheelchair down into the water. Fortunately as well as our swimming towels we had brought our swimming hats, which are obligatory in many pools in Italy, including this one.

Back to our bedroom to try and make the shower work effectively – the room was extremely well appointed with a Jacuzzi bath and all manner of gadgets and a bed that could have slept a clutch of illegal immigrants together with us, but this being Italy the gadgets took a bit of time to find your way to how they work.

At a quarter to eight we went down to dinner and . . . ahah! this is one of those dining rooms that we see in Italian hotels and holiday centres from outside sometimes, a kind of therapy-centre dining room, we have never been in one before.

Many couples already eating, though the restaurant had only opened at 7.30. A small-choice menu, just three choices at each course, the menu changed daily, and a salad bar that was more of a vegetable bar in fact, where you helped yourself to whatever you wanted, all cold. I asked the waiter – who has probably been working there since he was a young man, which he no longer is – whether the vegetables were to be as an antipasto or an accompaniment to the main course. ‘You can do whatever you want'’ he replied with a smile. ‘Have it with both if you want’.

As we have seen many people in the UK do when there is a free salad bar, folk were piling their plates high. These particular folk were most certainly getting their five portions of fruit and vegetables per day: all in one go.

Unlike in Britain, where salad bars tend to include a lot of starch in their choices – potatoes in gunge and pasta and rice with various bits – this vegetable bar was solely vegetables. There were potatoes, but just plain boiled and left to cool, no white milky sludge. And while the Italians, like the Brits, pour all sorts of stuff on their pile after having filled their bowls, in Italy this is predominantly oil and salt; there was vinegar too but that was not being widely taken up. In Britain it is all manner of thick sloppy sauces, mostly white or pink in colour.

Aside from us the hotel guests were all Italian. We spoke only Italian to the staff though I think one of the waiters spoke quite good English as he cheerily said a few words to us. The hotel guests were Italian but in demeanour they could equally have been British hotel guests, consisting predominantly of couples, both young and old, with almost entirely nothing whatsoever to say to each other. Despite popular prejudice, that particular characteristic is not predominantly British, or predominantly anywhere. A big dining room and quite full, all rather quiet and clinical-looking.

From the choices of three options recited by the waiter Hilary and I each chose the same; a starter of caserèccio, I asked the waiter what that was, as caserèccio literally just means ‘homemade’, and he said it was like a maccheroni with tomato and aubergine. Righto, we’ll go for that. If fact it was a type of pasta known as strozzaprete, literally ‘strangled priest’, little twists of pasta; I guess the waiter would have thought we might understand the word maccheroni but not some of the more picturesque pasta shapes. No one else seemed to ask the waiter what caserèccio was, I guess they knew it would be a pasta dish in tomato sauce. The aubergine in the dish was cut into small cubes and dusted in flour and deep-fried – sounds far worse that it is, it was actually very tasty.

For main course we both had fillet of manzo, which is beef and which turned out to be a rather chewy steak, browned throughout and quite exercising on the jaws, but then I suppose this was a health spa. Served as meat invariably is in Italy, accompanied solely with a slice of lemon.

For dessert a good and tasty strawberry tart, a kind of sponge cake with strawberry sauce on top. Then off to our beds. Dinner €25 a head, not too bad at all. No drinks included in that, we bought from the waiter a bottle of sparkling rosé for €15 and a bottle of mineral water for €2.

Stage 4: Luzern to Montecelli Terme

From Luzern we drove through the 16-kilometer Gotthard tunnel at a steady 80kmh and out the other side where something extraordinary happens: no longer are you in German-speaking Switzerland, now everything is in Italian.

We stopped for a brief look at the town of Bellinzona, which is still well into Switzerland but you have to keep kicking yourself to remind yourself that you are not in Italy. Italian is spoken, so far as we could tell, by everyone, the restaurants look Italian; a famously-efficient red and yellow Swiss post van passes, but the driver is wearing dark glasses, is in need of a shave, and is smoking a cigarette – most disconcerting to one’s image of the archetypal Swiss. The driver of the famously efficient red and yellow Swiss Post Bus that waits outside the main railway station is standing at the open door of his bus, flashing his elaborate and colourful designer watch on his wrist while eating a biscuit. No, kick yourself again, this is Switzerland, unbelievable, but it is Switzerland.

A shortish journey today so we stopped again, still in Switzerland, for our lunch, at Lugano, which like Bellinzona looks and feels exactly like Italy. A prosperous-looking town, men in dark suits and ties were walking on the promenade of the lake, speaking Italian. Bankers or financiers.

Anyone who believes that the landscape makes the people needs to visit the Ticino region of Switzerland. It’s the people what make the landscape, not the other way round, Harry.

And Then Into Italy.

With the increased border controls between Switzerland and EU countries, voted for by the Swiss people, or some of them at least, the Italian border guards find it appropriate to place a check on the cars passing through from Switzerland into their country. This check mainly seems to consist of the officials standing about smoking a cigarette and believing they look hard and mean and cool, while the drivers of the cars that they have held in a queue that makes its way slowly through the filter, think, oh no! Here we are again, it’sn Italy!

I don’t know what it is; perhaps it is just the only true religion: the perversity of life, that means that whenever someone thinks they look hard, or mean, or cool, everyone who looks at them thinks they look flabby, stupid and ridiculous.

This observation, that those who think they look cool look instead to everyone who observes them from without as everything but, seems intrinsically basic to human life; yet so far as I can ascertain there has been no academic study as to the science of this, which seems surprising, seeing how fundamental it is. The condition seems especially to afflict Italians, who have the concept of la bella figura, a difficult phrase to translate precisely into English, the best I can come up with, that I think is pretty close to accurate, is: ‘ you dunnarf look a tit’.

But we put up with it. Driving in Italy is stressful because Italian men are brought up by their mothers to believe that they are big boys, big little piggies, and so feel the need to treat the motorway as a racetrack. Mostly I stay well clear of this and let them exercise their egos as they see fit, but occasionally I need to make use of the power of my motor car, which does not look much but has a reasonable gun about it, mainly I use this power to leave potential trouble behind; quite often this pending trouble can be attributed to someone who is texting and either separately or simultaneously reading the newspaper while driving. Piggies can do that quite invincibly, for they are their mother’s favourite little piggy and have the dark glasses to prove it. Periodically I get the car reaching a bit over 100mph to avoid what could be a dangerous situation.

Italian women are not brought up to be invincible piggies like their menfolk, though they are no better on the motorways, for an Italian woman might have read somewhere that paying attention to the road is important, but that must always and as a matter of common knowledge take second place to the infinitely more important concern of texting or talking on the mobile to her friends, or perhaps more accurately, to her mother.

Cruise control, in Italy, is nearly always impossible to use. No sooner have you switched it on than you have to switch it off again because of someone slowing down unpredictably, trying to race you to overtake, or you catch them up when they are travelling in the middle lane and you are in il filo di vergogna – the lane of shame, known in most other countries of Europe rather prosaically as ‘the inside lane’. Only in the hours between about 1pm and 2.30 can I make a little use of cruise control, while many of the piggies are at their trough and their womenfolk talking to their friends on their telefonino at the same time, mouthful by mouthful, as eating their lunch.

Hilary does find it stressful being a car passenger in Italy at the best of times. Perhaps for someone with Alzheimer’s, where unpredictable situations are best avoided, Italy is not the best country to travel in a car in.