Middle-aged flash packers

I was quite sad to pack up and leave our posh pad this morning. No more sitting on the roof terrace listening to the church tower bong and watching the bats fly about.

Today we headed off towards La Spezia, our base for the next 5 nights. We are aiming to walk the Cinque Terre and do a few other things too.

The drive wasn’t long but was a bit stressful as (and this is not new to us) the Italian driving is quite aggressive- there is always someone up your exhaust pipe. Then it wasn’t clear exactly where we were heading once we arrived in La Spezia and Mrs Google let us down by having a spasm at just the wrong moment. The final straw was not being able to find a parking place. All the reviews for the apartment said it was easy to find a space – not today. We drove around countless times looking for somewhere to park to no avail. We phoned Raul, the person renting the apartment to us, whose reply was a metaphorical shrug of the shoulders and told us “ that’s how it is here.” Oh really? Well that’s fine then, nothing I enjoy more than being hot and sweaty, needing a wee, with a husband who is on the verge of a meltdown. Eventually I spotted a man with his car keys in his hand. Like an angel sent from heaven, he looked at us and pointed to his truck. Yes! We have a space! Praise the lord. The car will not move from that spot now until we leave.

The next joyous task was to transfer all our worldly stuff to the apartment which was 150m away and on the 5th floor. Luckily there is a lift. But what a lift. It barely fits 2 people and anything else was definitely a squeeze. It’s like something from a Wes Anderson film, with 2 little glass doors that you must close as 1.) it won’t go anywhere and 2.) no one else can use it if you don’t. There are signs everywhere imploring people to remember to shut the lift doors – obviously a source of great frustration for anyone calling the lift that never comes.

I didn’t really feel like shooting the breeze with Raul once we made it to the flat but he was actually very pleasant and the apartment is beautifully done inside. Outside I’m living the life of a gang member (it’s a bit “ real” where we are, lots of slightly down at heel apartments and we overlook a petrol station) but inside I’m Mrs very cool city crash pad kind of person.

It wouldn’t be us just to sit inside and enjoy relaxing in our air conditioned apartment, we had to find things to do like go out and buy sandwiches, ready for tomorrow. We love a good old look round local supermarkets anyway, always interesting. We enjoyed ourselves so much that we wandered into the wrong apartment block (someone had left the gate open) and it wasn’t until we realised that the lift appeared to be in the wrong place that we became aware of our mistake. Luckily we didn’t need a key to get out as that would have been very awkward.

Tomorrow we intent to do stages 1 and 2 of the Cinque Terre. We have read that it gets incredibly busy during the summer but we are hoping we haven’t quite hit peak season.