Another travel day in fabulous Italy! We narrowly avoided certain disaster with our train this AM. We both thought our train left at 1245 and were 1/2 a heartbeat away from getting off our bus to enjoy some of the best gelato we've had. Luckily (though we didn't know it at the time) the place (Funivia) was closed so we pushed on to the train station. We still managed to walked into the station at about 1219 and almost pooped ourselves when we saw our train was leaving in 5 minutes!!!! Crisis averted though, no worries.
We had to change trains in Parma though and a few stops later witnessed a passenger getting a little spunky with the conductor. We couldn't understand what was going on but it clearly wasn't good.
So we're staying at another airbnb.com place and through messages we were told by the host that she'd pick us up (winning!). Long story short we were picked up by a nice young girl and her mother in a MERCEDES!!!! They drive us around a bit and then dropped us off at our fabulous 1 BR Apt 1 block from the water.
Ok let me draw this out a bit. I'm going to be a doll and paint a picture of the luxury we currently find ourselves in. We enter the building through solid oak doors 10 feet high, hung with brass fittings and enough charm to make Greta Garbo swoon. The foyer was a tad worn but only in that 1930's Clark Gable meets Bugsy Malone sorta way. Anyway, we take the lift up to the 3rd floor where Deborah (our host) inserts a skeleton key (you read that right ... Another check on my 'finer things list' what what!!!!!) into a finely crafted door with a mirror finish. Entering the apt, we were greeted with the scent of many leather bound books with only the slightest hint of fresh roses in the air. Our eyes were treated with a carnival of beauty as we gazed upon the rich ma-HOG-any furniture. As if this palazzo couldn't get any better, we skipped into the bathroom to find the Cadillac of showers! Straight out of star-trek, the shower had a touch sensor temperature control, radio with a put-snoop-dog-to-shame sound system and about 16 different massaging shower spouts.
I'll just let your mind wander from there. Suffice it to say that we got all this opulence for about $80/night (our most expensive night in Italy!). Airbnb has been a gold mine so far!
We got a few logistical things sorted out for tomorrow and then went out for a quick bite to eat and of course, gelato!
Tomorrow we're heading out to the Cinque Terre for some hiking, eating and train riding.
Didn't take a whole lot of pics today so these will have to do:
1) La Spezia Harbor.
2) Carolyn holding our skeleton key.
3) dinner menu / placemat at dinner.
4) Carolyn in our living room.
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