Good Bye Gardone Riviera

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Good bye lovely, tidy, highly functional Gardone. Good bye town full of Italians who all speak six languages fluently, including yours, who want to help you, know how and actually get around to doing so before you are ready to kill them. Good bye parks that are not merely patches of infrequently mown weeds, but that have flowers, soft green lawns and fish ponds full of large, healthy, non-mutated fish.

Good bye functioning air conditioning. Good bye bar bathrooms with a seat on every toilet, doors that lock and soap dispensers jammed with actual soap.

Good bye clean streets entirely devoid of gypsy beggars and graffiti on the beautiful, meticulously restored medieval buildings. Good bye fabulous boutique hotel with the ridiculously friendly staff and apparently limitless supply of ice cold prosecco.

Good bye happy, rich, friendly German tourists. Good bye smiling French people who are much nicer than any French people you’ve ever met before.

Good bye precious taste of normal civilisation.

Hello Rest of Italy.

I’m back.



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