Gelato and Guinness anyone?

I've been to Italy on two occasions. Once to Lake Garda and once to Sorrento. Out of the group I normally travel with, I tend to be the one that selects the destination and organises things. But in June 2011, I was allowed to take a back seat. Someone else made the arrangements and I researched nothing.

When we travelled to Lake Garda in 2011, to me, Sirmione was not just the most beautiful place on the lake but the most beautiful place I'd ever seen. In fact everywhere on the lake was beautiful but none more so than Sirmione. While I was there I encountered a market stall selling the lemons the size of grapefruits Lemons appear to grow everywhere and you can't walk more than a few metres in Italy without encountering a shop that sold Limoncello, a lemon-based liqueur.

The same experience could be said of our trip to Sorrento in 2013. Limoncello could be bought anywhere, and I found the Italian shopkeepers to have a similar mindset to Moroccan souks when it came to the aggressive selling of anything you accidentally brushed your fingertips across.

But there was one institution that was conspicuous by its absence during both trips to Italy. A pub! Yes, there were restaurants that were more than happy to sell you alcohol with your meal, but we just wanted to chill out without being obliged to order food. We then found ourselves ordering gelato after our meal, just to spread out the evening, irrespective of whether there were sufficient rooms in our stomachs to fit it in.

Afterwards, we would go for a leisurely stroll, only to find that ice cream parlours (or Gelaterias) were everywhere. We ate ice cream on every day of both holidays. With such an abundance of flavours to choose from, it's fair to say that in Sorrento, the 6 of us probably got through them all.. It was wonderful but all we really needed was a pub we could go and chill out in. Gelaterias would close at midnight for last orders, but it seemed pubs wouldn't open for business at all.

We did eventually find an Irish pub in Sorrento. You can always rely on finding an Irish pub in the most unlikely or remote places, and despite our endless trek, we never entered the only pub we could find. It was far too busy and rowdy for our tastes.

But this got me thinking. Just imagine Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin stepping onto the moon for the first time in 1969, a historical fact many still disbelieve. Just as Armstrong takes in the surroundings, in the distance he spots a busty redhead with a Derry accent stood behind a bar drawing a shamrock on a head of Guinness.

Well, there's always an O’Neil’s pub around somewhere isn’t there?

#holidays