The Romance That Wasn’t Realized.

After that docking in Bari, I decided I will never step my shoe in most part of Italy again, even for a one-day landing on a cruise ship. Liguria was the solely region that I accepted in visiting in this country, and its civilized advantage was pointed by me. I arrived to there for one day.

I keep my word about Pisa Airport in relating not to use it for leaving from there. Arriving there is acceptable, and easy to navigate when you want to find the exit. It was late evening when I walked out of the building. I already knew the road to my stay, which was just a several dozen meters away.

Misery didn’t leave me in Italy. They always come, even though I had prepared myself by learning about upcoming strikes, as I took that habit–about which I forgot in Bari–but something always happens. A bathroom door that moves to the right side was locked. I wanted to open it, but the mechanism jammed. I tried to turn the handle upward more than once – it was useless. I used force to grab for the opening space of the door when I pulled the lock to the right, and it broke me to freedom.

I, as a good citizen, went to say it to the owner. I didn’t want to berate him – just inform. It had an expected Italian reaction. He was surprised that I’m alone but close the bathroom door. I began to explain to him and gave an example: if some woman got stuck there, then it was the meaning of the word “stuck” which he didn’t know. The host asked, “Where is the woman?” without making me amaze by such response. He simply recommended not using the lock. I met an infamous Italian recklessness in everyday situation. I could strike it off in my list. If I something had for the left in experience of Italy, it was being attacked by q big Italian man who would hug and kiss me. I could only think about the poor people who will be entrapped in the bathroom.

The owner, who I must admit was a funny-soul guy, said everything alright and gave me a brotherly handshake.

A little later, I had problems with the Wi-Fi connection. He, as a regular Italian, hadn’t even looked at my laptop. He said me it had been working for ten years. Eventually, I was supposed to make additional optioning.

I left the hotel at seven o’clock. It was at exact time when the host was going to come inside. I saw him through the window, while he couldn’t – my sudden appearance frightened him. I forgot to apologize. That meeting led to a short conversation in which I replied to him that everything fine, and we committed our farewells to each other in which he touched me around the elbow. I think I became more acceptable to physical contact from Italian strangers though that part of their mentality isn’t to my taste.

I missed the Pisamover train because the machines didn’t like both of my credit cards. I used a prepared cash. After long waiting on the station, I took the train that reached me to Pisa’s central station. Those ticket machines didn’t like my cards as well, which they only accepted. I went to a cash desk, which had no line. The card worked in that place. I said “grazie” to the young woman behind the window, but she gave me a dry attitude to me and replied in English. I had a very few minutes before the transport leave the station and me. I was climbing through a crowd of people, and went through of walking men for push a button of a door that just had closed. It opened.

The train headed to La Spezia. I watched on the station stops, recalling stories that I had last years.

It was almost fast recalling the map of this city when I searched for my hotel using a drawn route. I chose the wrong streets because they were filled with market tents in which second-hand clothes were on the sale. I said to myself, “A Little Venice”. Perhaps I was being crude at that time. I arrived at the hotel early, but a true good-soul Italian woman called the phone and found out there was a free room.

I arrived for personal, it ended up that I came to visit what I couldn’t during that quite December. I even rejected that sight. Anyway, I planned a trip to Portevenere with the help of a young funny receptionist who admitted that mistakes right and left sides when her hand and word didn’t match. She was a classic Italian lady, and that always charmed me.

I wanted to have a boat experience to Portovenere. I walked into a port, thinking about lack of what I have seen in Dubrovnik lately. I discovered a house in which met a young woman whose strictness was included in her put make-up. She wasn’t welcome to me. I was in thanking, while she ignored and said the standard final kind words, which were uttered unnatural.

I still had forty-five minutes before departure. I strolled at an unhurried pace to the end of the port, getting delight from the sea wind. When I returned at the same speed, I took a seat on a bench. It was soon when people began to create a queue. I joined it a some time later.

It wasn’t organized wisely. Why form a queue for waiting for twenty minutes when it would be better to open access to the ship and keep a man at its entrance?

You can’t take a boat in this city after Dubrovnik and Kotor, or it was recalling of New York, when I watched on natural landscapes, dark green water and the buildings. Some of these edifices associated with Cinque Terre due to multicolor palette. I convinced through watching at those constructions in my view about regularity of the location which attracts myriads, as I saw in a day of arrival in La Spezia and took a parallel path to avoid a looming crowd. Soon in front of me appeared a seen on pictures Torre Scola in learning the region. A tower that was built in XVII century for protection was a tourist object now. I eventually realized in images it can’t interesting. That was indeed in reality. A regular building without attracting me history.

I looked on the stone buildings of Portovenere from the top of the boat before leaving. If that place seemed the depth of Italy in December where you should try to look for those who knows English, it was a tourist spot where frequently can meet a man who knows your language. I moved to the entrance, which gates were closed. I entered into narrow streets that were showed life, which I haven’t seen in Venice. It should be guessable that selling goods included pesto. I crossed two times how woman offered a piece of bread with its traditional sauce to people in front of me who rejected. I would accept it.

The ruins of the fortress contained multiple views from the windows, which aren’t riveting in actuality. All that were just facts. I still had Balkans on my mind.

I walked into a church, which impressed in its unique design in multicolored stones and humbleness. I walked around and climbed up to the top to Doria Castle. It required additional payment in five euros. Seeing the inside is you only experience the building itself, which is likeable by the special design in angles, as it usually did in a fortress construction. There is a garden with mandarin trees. That part of fruits reachable with a regular human height and hands were absent. Did anybody think about shake the trees? That similar and the same question was on the next day on La Spezia train station.

I decided to return by bus. No difference where choose a discomfort. A woman that sold me a ticket was cheerful with a pair of mother and her teenage daughter, but she turned strict in talking with me all two times. I recalled Cheech Marin’s roles in From Dusk Till Down. Although he played different characters, but that female and those I’ve seen in Pisa Train Station and La Spezia port were united in common, which was in the same attitude and somewhere similar was in the facial characteristics.

The bus was densely populated of people in contrast of free walking in November. The human bodies were touching me, and I was pushing them back.

I walked out from the bus and said to myself “Glad to be alive!” It was near with the hotel to which I’ve came and didn’t step out after that. It was the end of holidays in Italy.