Escape

I started my final full day in La Spezia at a little cafe around the corner from my hotel. I sat outside to eat my giant custard-filled brioche, only to find that I was sitting next to a chain-smoker having a lengthy and dramatic FaceTime call with her mother while her poor little chihuahua shivered at her feet. Then, apparently taking this as permission to be socially appalling, the Chinese woman on the other side of me started watching videos in loud, screeching Mandarin on her phone. I gave up on both fresh air and peace and scuttled inside.

It was my final day in La Spezia but also Liberation Day, an Italian public holiday to celebrate the overthrow of the Fascists in 1945. So apart from a few tourist cafes, everything is closed. I took this as a good last opportunity to do some exploring, and walked up into the mountains on the outskirts of the city to get a panoramic view.

Getting up to the first outlook was relatively easy. Skirt around the naval shipyards, follow the main road for a bit, then break off and head up one of those little right-of-ways that have existed for centuries. It was another Kilometre of a Thousand Stairs, but this one was heavily overgrown and generously sprayed with spring wildflowers. Clearly no one used this path apart from a handful of local nonnas who probably powered up and down it like elderly hunched triathletes twice a day.

When the path topped out, there was no clear view, despite the promises of Google Maps. I eventually realised that I had to go up the driveway with multiple No Entry signs, then stop just out of sight of the grand villa/castello above it and get my panorama of La Spezia’s harbor and take some photos.

I then went back down to the main road and continued on to another lookout point for La Spezia itself, with Google Maps promised was just a couple of kilometres up the road. The only problem was… Italian roads. Pedestrians are not much of a consideration on semi-rural Italian roads, especially when the terrain is steep. There tends to be a retaining wall right next to the road on one side, and a crash barrier hard against the road on the other. With Italian drivers of questionable competency and responsibility speeding past on both sides, I was scuttling along the narrowest of safe paths.

But I eventually got to the La Spezia panorama, only to find that it didn’t exist. The view existed, but there was no verge for cars, or indeed me, to pull over and admire it. There was just the road, the crash barrier, and a steep slope down to a valley a hundred metres below.

By straddling the barrier I got my photos… and then realised that the only way back to La Spezia, about a kilometre away as the crow flies, was to backtrack the five kilometres I’d just covered.

Well, bugger.

I once again braved the Highway of Italian Death, and was relieved when I got back to the right-of-way that led down to the city. My Garmin later informed me that it was the fastest I’d ever covered that distance: it’s amazing, the incentive of running away from homicidal Italian drivers.

For my final La Spezia aperitivo, I’d planned to go back to NoMad for more mezcal miracles, but they were closed for the public holiday. So I went next door to Karma, whose cocktails are just as good, and celebrating the joy of La Spezia boozing one last time.