Sitting by the lake on a magical Friday evening, looking out upon the slowly darkening water, the gentle strains of a female singing, backed by some cheesy music, found its way to my ears.

It was mostly jazz crooner classics.

As I finished my meal I decided to find out what was going on, as I was quite enjoying it, and made my way to Bar Il Molo where a quite stunning Italian lady was on the stage singing accompanied by a very eccentric looking older man on occasional saxophone and the sound machine. It wasn’t much more than karaoke, to be honest, but it was entertaining none the less, and after a glass (or two?) of wine I bid my farewell and the singer waved goodbye. So sweet.

It was well past dark by then and I was half thinking of calling it a night, but I had noticed another bar close to where I was staying advertising live music and I wandered in that direction. As I approached I heard another female voice belting out a Led Zepplin track and had to go in.

I settled in for the show, a duo Valentino Romano and Matteo Finizio, both playing guitar and Valention on vocals. No karaoke machine, pure unadulterated acoustic magic.

Here’s a clip of them as a Valentino Romano Trio I found on Youtube, Matteo the guitarist on the right.

Somehow, unusually because I prefer to blend in and be in the background, I caught their eye, and ended up talking the night away with them between sets (with quite a bit of sign language thrown in due to my deplorable Italian), helped them pack up and I even had a go on the guitar myself at one point, pictured here snapped by Valentino.

Great way to spend a Friday night, wrapping up at 1am.