La Spezia

Despite being exhausted I only slept for about six hours, possibly due to the calliope of snores I had going on around me – it was actually kind of beautiful when they fell into syncopated rhythms, like a narcoleptic dance party. But there was no need to rush, so I lingered over breakfast, walked over to the train station to buy my next ticket, came back to pack and check out, then rolled the luggage back to the train station to catch the 12.10pm to La Spezia, on the Tuscan coast.

The train was an InterCity semi-express, but even so it took nearly three and a half hours to reach La Spezia, because this section of Italy is 90% mountain and that rarely allows trains to travel in straight lines.

But I wasn’t resentful. After the cold grey hauteur of Amsterdam, it was like being born anew when the train first powered out of a tunnel and into a landscape of warm spring sunshine, earth-toned villas, palm trees and the Mediterranean Sea sparkling away to the horizon.

When the train arrived in La Spezia, I trundled my bags out of the station and down the hill towards the old town, having more or less worked out where my “guesthouse” was. However, it turned out to be the ‘less’ side of the more or less dichotomy. Eventually, using a serious slab of my very limited roaming data, I managed to locate the street address… and found a fish restaurant, a barber, a women’s clothing store, an empty building undergoing construction, and another fish restaurant.

I had a sudden, horrible suspicion that I’d been the victim of a booking.com scam, having paid a thousand dollars to roll my luggage up to a non-existent address.

However, Google Maps was quite insistent that the guesthouse existed, and after several minutes I found a plaque next to an anonymous glass and metal door with the guesthouse’s name on it.

I rang the bell. There was no response.

There was a phone number on the plaque, so I rang that. The Italian phone exchanged chugged and sparked, as Italian phone exchanges tend to do, then connected me with a cheerful man who told me, in broken English, that he’d be right down. Sixty seconds later, I saw, through the glass door, a man trotting down the stairs inside. He opened the door, gestured for me to enter with a brisk “Pronto”, and held it open as I got my bags inside. When I turned around to do introductions, I found that he’d walked off into the building site. He wasn’t the hotelier; just a nice Italian man holding a door open for me.

I wandered around the foyer and up the stairs a little. On the first floor there was another plaque for the guesthouse, but the door was locked and no one answered the bell.

So unless this was the most dedicated and well-thought out scam in existence, the guesthouse did actually exist. But getting into it was proving to be like a reverse escape room.

Several minutes later, a chipper middle-aged man opened the exterior door, called out my name, and introduced himself as Marco, the owner. And within five minutes we were in my room, and I had keys and a town map and the wifi details, and all was well. It turns out that Marco simply epitomises the Italian paradigm that getting 90% of the details right is good enough, hence the slightly incorrect address, the slightly inadequate signage, and the slightly inadequate communication. Ah, bella Italia.

By this stage it was after 5pm, and needing aperitivo, I did what every 21^st century traveller does and googled “cool bar near me” and picked the first one with photos that I liked. It was still a little early for aperitivo, so I did a little reconnaissance walk around the La Spezia old town. I liked what I saw. Multiple artisanal gelaterias? Check. Colonoaded shopping arcades? Check. Cute little pedestrian streets lined with interesting shops and restaurants? Check. Big open air market selling fresh vegetables, fish, flowers, bread and cheese? Check. Statue of Garibaldi waving a sword from the back of a rearing horse? Well, maybe not immediately interesting but at least it proves I’m still really in Italy, so check.

Just before 7pm I took myself to the cool bar I’d identified, NoMad, and made my request for aperitivo. It wasn’t cheap, but I’d hit the aperitivo jackpot. For a start, they had wifi. They also had a mezcal-heavy house-created cocktail list, and I ordered a drink of mezcal, calvados and pear liqueur, which was amazing. For an extra 5 euros (so, 17 euros in total) I also got a tasting board of proscuitto, cheeses, toast fingers, and little paninis topped with cream cheese, sultanas and poppy seeds, or oregano crusted lamb, or cheese, sundried tomato and basil, or smoked salmon. Plus of course, the usual green olives, crisps and peanuts.

When the waitress learned I didn’t speak Italian, she brought out one of the owners, whose English was better, to chat with me and make the usual Australia-Italy connections (“Ah, Australia, my best friend owns a bar in Sydney!”). And then, with plenty of booze, snacks and wifi, I parked myself there for the next two hours, enjoying lo spirito d’italia. I ordered another drink that was fine but less thrilling (a blend of pistachio liqueur, cognac and mango, which the owner admitted was for a different sort of patron, and laughed gratefully when I agreed that it was a Girl’s Drink and I harboured no resentment for that), and they topped up my crisps and olives. When I eventually went in to settle my bill, I chatted with the other owner about our shared love of mezcal, then he introduced me to the bartender to pull apart the function of the ingredients within the drink, then he pulled down a bottle of mezcal he’d just ordered in and poured generous shots for the three of us to down. I opined that it was very smooth and balanced, which he seemed to appreciate.

But at the back of my slightly sozzled mind I was panicking slightly. Surely a mistake has been made here? I am not the person who gets invited into bars to do tequila shots with the owner. Have you somehow confused me with the Queen of the Extroverts I met in Amsterdam? Has some of her boundless social energy rubbed off on me?

I guess that in Perth I’m just some guy, whereas in Italy I’m an exotic Australian. I could get used to this mantle of international mystique.