The odd place

Monday, May 7th. La Cetina-Florence-La Spezia. We left La Cetina at 9am. It was supposed to be an hour and a half drive. And as we said our last goodbye to the Tuscan countryside, we took one last picture.

Arthur had a great night last night; it included 5 hours of continuous sleep. He had just woken up when we started our drive from La Cetina. He was actually pretty quiet in the car seat for the first hour. Then he got antsy. I distracted him with his toys and songs until we got to a row of gas stations at the edge of Florence. Then while Sean filled up gas, I changed Arthur’s diaper and fed him. Then, Sean put him to sleep in the car seat. This worked out well because it took another 30-40 minutes to get to the car rental place. By the time we returned the car, Arthur woke up from his nap and was cooperative in being placed back in the car seat so that we could walk comfortably to the train station.

Our train left from Platform 1 at 11:53. The train was available for boarding at 11:30 though, so that was nice. This was a regional train which meant that there was really no dedicated space for big luggages. There was an upper and lower deck. We chose to sit in the lower deck. We placed our bags and the stroller in two empty seats closest to the doors and we took the four seats facing each other for us to sit. This worked out great. The train stopped at many stations, including Pisa, so there were lots of disembarkation and embarkation, and empty seats. Even the train conductor who checked our tickets didn’t bat an eye over where we placed our bags.

At one point, we put Arthur to sleep for a nap, but it was only a 2.5-hour train journey so the ride didn’t feel like it took very long.

Once we arrived in La Spezia, we headed straight for our Airbnb. Pierfilippo was there to greet us and he showed us around the place.

Then, we went to get grocery at a Coop store 5 blocks away. As we walked there, there was this woman who called out to us. We kept on walking. At first she said our baby was cute “bello bambino” but then all of a sudden, she sounded like she was angry. “Signora,” she said. Then she said it again twice. Louder and louder. “Signora! Sig…no…ra!” We turned around. She said something else then she turned away.

Good thing it didn’t escalate into anything serious. It just felt weird.

Our neighborhood seemed kind of sketchy, even though there were lots of babies around. There were also some sketchy characters, though. For some reason, it reminded me of downtown Las Vegas. I’m sure people here were nice, but there seemed to be something odd about this place.

Anyway, we got what we needed at the grocery store. There was only one person at the checkout counter, though, so it took forever to make payment. I had to take Arthur out to put him to sleep as he was getting super tired and started crying.

Another weird thing we encountered was at the supermarket entrance. You couldn’t exit at the entrance. The sensor let out a super loud beep if you try to exit there. Unfortunately, it wasn’t easy to exit from the check out counters. You had to wait for everyone to clear or be a nuisance by asking them to move aside for you. It was a bit annoying, but hey… this is how it’s done here. Gotta play by the rules!

We chose to stay at La Spezia because of the ease of visiting Cinque Terre, and the price for Airbnb here was much cheaper compared to the cost of accommodation in any one of the five villages. We hope this was the best choice.

After grocery, we went home, cooked, and opened a bottle of wine: the Chianti Riserva that we bought at Radda in Chianti.

Unfortunately, this Airbnb had no wine glasses. This was the first Airbnb with no wine glasses out of all the Airbnbs that we’ve stayed at so far. There was wine key in the kitchen, but no wine glasses. Quite odd, eh? So… we had to make do with a regular glass. So sad.