Pre-Intermediate

Holidays

Tim, 20, student from Manchester

When I was a teenager I went on holiday with my parents to Brittany in France. My parents rented a lovely house on the beach, and the weather was great. But I was 17, and I didn’t want to be on holiday with my mum and dad and my little brother. I wanted to be with my friends. We went to the beach every day and sunbathed and we went to a fantastic seafood restaurant for my birthday. But I was miserable and I hated every minute of it. I didn’t smile once in two weeks. What really made me furious was that my parents let my older sister, who was 19, go to Spain with her friends.

Gabriela, 28, marketing manager from Rome

I’m from Rome and the summer here is really hot. So last year my husband and I decided to go to Sweden, to escape from the heat. We booked a 10-day holiday in Stockholm, where the temperature in the summer is normally about 20 degrees every day. But when we got to Stockholm there was a heat wave and it was 35 degrees every day. It was awful because there was no air-conditioning anywhere. We couldn’t sleep at night – it was boiling in the hotel, and in the shops and museums too. We didn’t want to go shopping or go sightseeing or do anything – we were too hot. We just sat in cafes and argued all day. We didn’t need to go to Sweden to do that!