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| Talk,
Julie Miller,
18 January 1999 | |
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It's November 1st and that means the race is on for holiday companies to encourage us to book early and miss the rush. This morning the first of many such incentives was to be found lying on our door step - the Club Med2000 brochure. It reminded me of the mental note I made last August that for as long as I have my sanity, I will never again be fooled into thinking that being locked up with 700 other families of various nationalities, (with the British very much in the minority) would be a winning way to spend two grand, on 2 weeks holiday. Last summer (along with my husband and 2 year old daughter) I made just that mistake.
Looking back there are of course certain things that make Club Med so popular. The food is good and there's plenty of choice. The moment we arrived at our holiday village in Metaponto (Italy) we headed straight to the dining area. We were overwhelmed at the choice on offer and espicially for us veggies abroad, usually it's a variant on cheese omelette and chips three times a day. This in contrast was heaven, and we happily balanced platefuls of food from the self service restaurant to the communal dining areas. Most tables (top-of-the-range-white-plastic) seated 6 to 8 guests. This seating arrangement encouraged guests to mingle and meet over meal times. Being unable to speak a word of French or Italian, apart from the usual courtesies of "hello," "goodbye" "thanks" and "that's enough" (the last phrase came in particularly handy during the holiday romances of my single days) meant that meal-times where filled with many embarrassing silences. Not a good start. Topped with the fact that our 2 year old decided to master the art of long distance food spitting and being surrounded by a table full of crab cracking french (crustaceans feature heavily on the menu) completed our vegeterian meal-time nightmare.
Meanwhile back at the chalet (it's at this point I just know that we've make a mistake we're not yet 40 and we're staying in a chalet!) the accommodation was basic with no view apart from next doors knickers (our balcony faced theirs and their washing line) but it was air conditioned, so at least we wouldn't be waking up in the night gasping for breath, when the humidity hit 85 degrees.
The other big Club Med thing is sport - great if you like sport (it's always
left me rather cold if I'm honest) But even Nick, who's always been quite handy with a bat was detered from anything energetic as the temprature rose. Tennis, rock climbing and rollerblading are all well and good, but when the heat is on and just turning the page of your holiday read seems like an effort why bother to move. Searing heat aside, the first real problem began when our daughter Rhianna, (along with almost all of the other under 3's) decided that the Baby Club was, in fact Baby Hell. Everyday small children clung to parents (and anything else on route) to delay them from the impending handover to the Baby Club Carers. What ever it was that the under 3's disliked about the baby clubs (of course the lack of cohearent language skills from the toddlers left us all mysterfiedas to what the problem was) This then, was then the harrowing after breakfast ritual, the guilt felt by most parents who had paid good money to lounge around the pool free of the demands of parental life, was not lessened by the staffs reassurance that eventually their children would love it. To be fair, after a few days (while toddlers weren't exactly banging the door down to get in) there was less and less aversion to spending a few hours a day in the Baby Club.
As the days passed, so increased our ability to lose things. (Something I've always had a particular knack for) Bottles, shoes, hats, the odd lighter and then to top it all, my sunglasses! I have to say, that for me finding a pair of sunglasses that don't make me look bug eyed (as my husband kindly informed me, most previous pairs had) was a result. Two weeks of frantic searching every high street shop previous to our holiday, and I'd finally laid my hands on a pair of glasses that I didn't mind
being seen in. Now gone! Rushing to the Club Med shop (the only place within miles to buy anything) in the hope of finding a replacement pair proved a waste of time. I've never seen a more hideous selection. I spent the rest of the day squinty eyed, hiding in dark corners from the blinding sun. Fed up with my moaning Nick returned from lost property office with a replacement pair. Reduced to looking like Janet Street-Porter (no wonder they had been left unclaimed) for the duration of the holiday. Then Nick lost his sunglasses. (yes one pair gone very annoying, two pairs, I think a bit spooky) "No problem" said a fellow Club Med guest over-hearing our dillemma "I've got a spare pair" and after much rummaging through his beach bag handed Nick a pair of sunglasses that only my mother would have been proud to own - on two counts, one that they were free, and two that my mother never really worries how things look as long as they work. (I blame the War) Nick and I, who admittedly are not exactly at the cuttting edge of beach-wear fashion, were now reduced to looking like the odd couple. This might all sound like a big fuss about nothing but it was at this point that it dawned on us. We where stuck in the middle of Southern Italy miles from anywhere, surrounded by only farmland and olive groves. And there was no escape.
Gradually we began to feel more and more trapped in Club Med World. With it's electronic gates, and home made entertainment. Every night Club Med staff would dress up and perform renditions of various 'hit musicals', all badly mimed, all managing to contain at least one Riverdance sequence, and all very painful, and because we where there for two weeks we had to sit through the same entertainment programme twice.
Now everything began to annoy us, the people, who on the first day of your holiday seem friendly and mildly amusing in a lets-be-friends-on-holiday-but-never- contact-us-once-we-get-home sort of way - began to get on our nerves, especially those who took their mobile phones to the poolside. One couple on holiday from Blackpool and the family printing business even brought a stack of full colour brochures and price lists with them, lest any of their fellow guests should be remotely interested in their wares (themed party hats and beer mats a speciality) needless to say the offers didn't exactly come flooding in. Around the pool the activities/entertainment got louder and more irritating, and the "Super bingo" prizes more pathetic, and the days seemed strangely longer. Then Nick fell ill, followed by Rhianna, and finally me. Our bodies exhuming any remaining contents from the Club Med dining hall, through every orifice at an alarming rate. Trapped in our room for 2 days in the distance we could just make out the call of Club Med reps asking "do you want to partieeeeeeeee?" in our case the answer was most definitely NO - not even if life depended on it.
When the time came to leave the coach journey back to Brindisi Airport took us via an industrial site at least 10 miles wide. Pumping and spewing out more pollution into the air and surrounding sea, than (I'm sure) European law permits, finally explained the fact that the private beach at Club Med (when not swarming with jelly fish) regulally washed up an alarming amount of yellow foam which at a guess is not a natural phenomenon in Southern Italy it certainly wasn't mentioned it in the brochure.
Club Med was not for us. My idea of fun is freedom from life's routines, and not sing-a-long French songs, communnal dancing, or in fact communnal anything. Never again will I be fooled into thinking that I'll enjoy super bingo. Never again will I pay good money to dine on plastic tables and watch silly holiday reps dancing round a carboard cut out of Titanic. In retrospect our holiday was less Club Med and more Club Dread.
But don't let that put you off.
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