We took the train from Bari to Rome, and then from Rome to La Spezia. It’s European trains and…gasp!…we were 5 minutes late getting to Rome. That was pretty much the excitement for the day.
We arrived in La Spezia at precisely 17:54 (exactly on schedule). Deb does not appreciate my lezze faire approach to finding our hotel. In Bari, she asked if we were getting close to the hotel and I answered “probably.” I should have known better. As we got off the train in La Spezia, she got out her phone, Google the hotel, did a 360 to get her direction correct and was off.
Well that got us to the front door of a huge well maintained building facing a piazza. I had received a text with the secret code. Deb found the keypad, we entered the code and click…we were in! Inside was a dilapidated courtyard, paint peeling and sort of
dingy. The text said to go to the back of the courtyard, turn right and go up the stairs to the third floor. Of course, we are Americans and start our floor numbers at 1, we are in Europe where floor numbers start at 0, so we tried to break into the second floor, unsuccessfully, until we realized we had to go up one more flight of stairs. Once we got there we entered the second secret code and click…we entered a brightly lit, 21st century hallway. Now the text said to go to door #2 and enter a third code to open a little box with our room card key. Using the card key, the light turned green and we were in. We hadn’t eaten all day, but the thought of re-entering the building seemed somewhat daunting.
With a little courage and a 37% charge on my phone (the only place that had all the codes) we left for a cocktail and eventually a couple of pizzas. And we made it back to the room, codes and all!
Tomorrow we venture to our Italian getaway, Cinque Terre.
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