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Swimming Pool..no krokodil attacks for 3 weeks nowBaia Domizia – Silly Dance Capital of Italy
If you’re reading this then the chances are that you are a family man who has always fancied going to Pompeii but can’t afford the outrageously expensive hotels of the Sorrento coast. So you’ve ended up looking at Eurocamp’s one and only site on the west coast of Italy, just like I did.
Here’s a tip. Book the Camping Villaggio directly via their website and sort yourself out with an Easyjet flight to Rome or Naples and you’ll save around £300 on the Eurocamp price. This does mean you won’t get your free Eurocamp pink and green beach bag, nor will you get to speak to their acne-ridden rep who knows less about the local area than you do. Indeed you sometimes wonder if they know which country they are in. However, on the money front, with one Euro currently equalling 762 English Pounds you’re going to need every penny you can get for your holiday. This is especially if you plan on buying your Weetabix from the camp shop.
You’ll need a car. It is not the sort of place that lends itself to public transport or long walks in the midday sun to find cheaper sources of Weetabix.
The beach is a five minute walk from the camp and is very pleasant. Take some sandals as the beach has red-hot black volcanic sand and the blisters can take days to heal. The beach is surrounded by picturesque mountains which I am assured are not volcanoes, although I didn’t like the way one of them was looking at me and a mountainside bush fire one evening got my sphincter twitching. I’ve seen those corpse casts at Pompeii.
On the aforesaid beach my youngest son got stung in the foot by a sea urchin. Apparently this was a rare event, so don’t let it put you off. Should this happen to you the most immediate relief to the pain is to urinate on the wound. Assuming you insist on using your own urine for this task, and not the urine kindly offered by your older brother, then your family can get hours of amusement watching you hopping around on one foot whilst spraying everyone else on the beach.
There is a town called Baia Domizia about five minutes drive away from the camp site but I wouldn’t bother with it. I’m sure it has plenty of restaurants but it looks to be full of tourists. There are some good local butchers, mozzarella de buffala is produced locally and the pizzas in Naples are the best in the world, so why live on anything else? The restaurant on the camp site is okay but the service is slap-dash to say the least, indeed it verges on slap-stick. After the fifth missing dish and the third drinks cock-up I started calling our waiters Stan and Ollie. They saw the funny side though, until I walked off without leaving a tip.
There are plenty of things to do in the vicinity: Exploring Pompeii, climbing Vesuvius, horse racing in Naples, tiptoeing across the Solfatara volcano crater and if you’ve flown into Rome you could spend a couple of nights there too (we got a Novotel hotel with a family room for only 70 Euros per night).
However best of all, at the Baia Domizia Camping Villaggio, is the evening entertainment to be had at the Pagoda stage. This involves a great deal of Italian Community Dancing to songs that should have stayed in the darkness of the jewel case enclosing the Best of Eurotrash CD. I speak of such songs as Schnappi das Kleine Krokodil. This is a song, sung by a German schoolgirl, which is all about a baby crocodile… which unfortunately escaped the handbag trade.
As the camp-site is mostly Italian holiday makers, it is mostly they that are standing up and doing their crocodile impersonations as soon as the opening bars to Schnappi are heard across the PA. Those that are remaining seated tend to be German and those that are rolling around on the ground hooting with laughter tend to be British. There was only me doing that really.
To do the Schnappi dance hold out your arms with palms upwards, then rotate your right hand 180 degrees. Then, still with arms outstretched, bounce the down-facing right palm on the up-facing left palm. Mmmm, looks like a crocodile doesn’t it?
Still the Italians have had the last laugh. It is now four weeks later and I still can’t get the accursed Schnappi song out of my head.
I have the loaded revolver in my hand as we speak
