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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Lifestyle
Gabriel Stewart

My holiday from hell: we were 20 drunk teenagers in a Sicilian villa. I would like to apologise to our host

Picture of Stewart wearing dark top, underwater with his mouth open as if shouting
Boy behaving badly … Gabriel Stewart on holiday with friends in Sicily. Composite: Guardian Design; Courtesy of Gabriel Stewart

Twenty British 16-year-olds rent a remote Sicilian villa for a week of partying and late-night binge drinking. It sounds like a holiday host’s nightmare. Well, anyone’s nightmare. Add in the fact that the host was staying on site with his elderly Italian parents, as the teenagers partied on without a care for their own welfare or anyone else’s. This wasn’t a holiday from hell for my teenage self, but I’m pretty sure it was for our hosts.

It was 2013 and, for many of us, it was the first time we had been away just with friends. Let loose from familial constraints, it was easy to get carried away. I arrived a few days later than the others but was the main contact with our host, Pablo. This meant that, before I even set foot in the villa, I received a string of messages threatening to kick us out. The police had apparently already been called after two late nights of nonstop boozing.

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