We took a cab to our hotel. It was 40 Euro. The driver dropped us off in the parking lot and we went to what we thought was the door. I'm not really good at reading Italian, but I was pretty sure the sign said "closed for remodeling". The whole place can't be closed for remodeling. Nobody does that.
Next door was a snack bar. You could get pizza, beer, coffee and ice cream. It was a bit scruffy looking and all the clientele were sitting outside smoking. You couldn't consider it a full service restaurant and it did not go through to a hotel. Mark went to investigate the other end of the building while I stayed with the bags. He came back to say that it was apartments on the other end. No hotel that he could see.
He stayed with the bags and I went around to the other side of the building. No doors, just a parking garage with no cars in it. It looked totally abandoned. Clearly we needed to call Hotels.com. They would sort this out, get us into a hotel that was open and maybe even help us find a taxi. Mark phoned them. I'm not sure what was going on, but I could tell it wasn't going well. He was left to die on hold more than once so we decided that perhaps I should try calling. By the way, did I mention that it was getting hot outside?
I called and tried to explain that it appeared that we had been booked into a hotel that was closed for remodeling and we needed to get that sorted out. The young lady told me they were having issues with their computers and asked if I could call back in a couple hours.
"No. I can't. You don't seem to understand my problem. We are standing on a sidewalk in Italy in front of a closed hotel that we have already paid for. It is hot. I don't even have a place to sit down. Someone needs to help me now."
She was indicating that I would need to book a different hotel and pay for that one. "No, I've already paid for one. I shouldn't have to pay again." But while she went to track down a supervisor to help, the call dropped, or maybe she decided it was too difficult to deal with it and she hung up. Who knows?
Not wanting to run out of phone battery, we opted to give up on Hotels.com since we'd called four times. We decided to call American Express Travel Services. American Express was a big help three years ago when my bag was on a trip of its own and Mark was hospitalized in Paris. Perhaps I should rephrase that. American Express didn't actually help with much but they gave the appearance and impression of being helpful. Which in some perverse way, is actually helpful because it makes you feel better even though nothing has actually changed. And since they had helped us with hotel bookings before, I assumed they would do so again. That young lady came back on the line to tell me that I did NOT have concierge service with them as far as she could tell. Since we'd been there for nearly an hour, I was starting to feel a bit stressed. I only knew that they'd been helpful before. We may have been trying to use points the time they helped us. Who knows? I pointed out that I had more than one account with American Express - Gold, Blue, Business. It doesn't matter. I am stranded and I need help.
Anyway, while she was looking to see what help might be available on another account, the call dropped. I supposed we were on our own. We decided the best plan would be to find a taxi, go to the airport and stay in one of the hotels that are actually located AT the airport rather than just near it. We would just have to sort things out with Hotels.com when we got home.
There was a taxi parked in front of the snack bar. Turns out he was off duty, having a beer and not interested in taking anyone anywhere. About that time, a taxi pulled in and dropped off a couple and their luggage. As they were looking around trying to figure out where to go, I was preparing to let them know that the hotel had been closed for remodeling. Mark was preparing to snag their taxi. Just as Mark and the taxi driver had all of our stuff loaded into the back of the cab, I noticed that the couple had disappeared into the "apartments".
I ran down to have a look myself. I can see why Mark thought they were apartments. All of the upper floors had substantial balconies and there was a bank of mail boxes out front - the kind they have in apartment complexes. But there was also a relatively small sign with the name of the hotel.
We gave the cabbie a fiver for his trouble and removed our bags from the back of the cab. It seems that only the full-service restaurant was closed - the hotel was open and they were expecting us.
And in fairness to Mark, once we were in our room, it was fairly obvious that it had once been an apartment. It was quite large for a European hotel room and you could picture where the kitchen had been. It had far more closet and storage space than any hotel room needs.
So all of the stressing out had been for nothing. But wait! There's more to this story. But it's getting too long, so I'll finish it tomorrow. Stay tuned...
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