Buongiorno!
Well, we’ve made our way to Salerno. What a beautiful drive through the mountains to get here. But that wasn’t the only challenge of the day. We arrived just in time for rush-hour and the place was jammed to the rafters.
It was quite easy finding our new place, an Air B&B called Casa Margherita. Problem was, it was on an uphill, one-way street that was bumper to bumper. So that pretty much ruled out stopping in front of the building to unload. Our next thought was to look for a parking spot nearby from which we could lug our bags back to the apartment. But after 15 minutes of going in circles trying to find something that clearly did not exist at this point in the day, we decided to become Italian and park illegally for unloading.
Fortunately, there was very little honking of horns and Vince was able to get to the apartment where our host was waiting for us to do the check-in. Meanwhile, I’m back in the car going around and around in even bigger circles. To no avail. Accchhhhh! Then I got a little frantic because I couldn’t remember the address of where we were staying. Double Acccchhhhhh! Fortunately, our hosts, Sylvia & Gianlucca, came to the rescue. They called around to local parking garages and reserved a space for us!!!!!! I was grateful that it was only a few blocks away from the apartment and I was able to find my way there with very little difficulty (except for the fact that I was totally soaked from my panic prespiration!) Hahahahahha!
Casa Margherita turns out to be a terrific spot. Here are a few pictures:
Front entrance from the street (Ingresso)
Bedroom (Camera di Letto)
Kitchen (La Cucina)
(Check out the yellow stickies - Vince labelled everything with their Italian names!)
Living Room (Il soggiorno)
The apartment is quite well-equipped and, boy, is it ever well-situated. It’s less than 10 minutes walk to the train station and the same to the Accademie Italiano, where we take our Italian classes. We’ll be taking pictures of the neighbourhood and they will be the subject of a future blog posting.
To end our first day in Salerno, we decided on pizza for dinner.
My favourite: prociutto, cherry tomatoes (Pomodorini), cheese and rocket!
Vince’s choice: ham, cheese, mushrooms and basil
Ok. You can see us in the pictures and you can see the food we ate. Two days later we were walking by the street where the pizzeria was and, guess what? IT WAS GONE!!! It’s-like-it-was-never-there!
The last story before we close the blog for today relates to our efforts to return our rental car. The following morning, we had an appointment to meet reps from Savour Italy, since they were taking care of the car return. We were advised to return the car with a full tank of gas, so we chose a gas station as our rendezvous point. The gas station was on our map and was only about 5 short blocks away. Sounds easy, right? Not so fast.
We get the car from the parking garage, enter the coordinates into the GPS and off we go with plenty of time to get to the gas station and fill up the car before we meet the Savour Italy guys. Turns out the GPS takes us through a whole series of one-way streets until we’re just beside the farmers market which is now teeming with vendors, their produce and their vehicles. It’s mayhem. And there is no sign of a gas station anywhere.
So we go around the block, which takes forever given the traffic, and drive very slowly looking for the gas station. Vince even got out of the car to walk down the street to look for it. No luck. We decided to try a different gas station. On the way, I made the mistake of turning down a street that turned out to be a dead-end. Accccchhhhhhh!!! Then I had to back out. Double Acccchhhhh! Geez. I bet you can already picture that I am once again sweating profusely. I am, however, pleased to report that I was able get out of this spot without any damage to the car. Phew! Fortunately, everything turned out well and we happily said goodbye to the car.
So, we leave you with these thoughts: no vacant parking spots, disappearing pizzerias and gas stations that do not exist.
SPOOKY!!!!!! I can hear the strains of The Twilight Zone playing…
Ciao for now!
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