Posted on 2014-1-15
As travelers there will be times we are in a situation when never thought possible, moments on any journey that leave you speechless asking yourself ‘is this really happening?’
It was shortly after seven that I’d finally arrived in Palermo and I handed the cab driver the address of the hotel and the second half of the nightmare began. I will never understand how a cab driver doesn’t know the address of a place in the city he works. I have the name, the address and phone number of the hotel I am staying in and he doesn’t know where it is, after driving all over the city he finally stops and we find someone who speaks English and she actually tells him how to reach my hotel.
Once we finally reached the hotel it looked like an abandoned building . The front door is decaying and there were no lights and I was ready to go to a holiday inn because there was no way I was staying there but the front door did say ‘the B&B Carella’. It had 9.1 rating on bookings, every accolade and the price per night was perfect and it was in the heart of Palermo. I was very grateful to the cab driver did stay with me until he knew I was in the hotel and safe (how often does that happen) when you’re in your own city never mind in a foreign country.
Once I entered and the lights went on I said ‘this has to be the wrong hotel.’ The lobby was old with decaying wood, wires hanging everywhere, dirty and covered in dust. There were no signs of life anywhere. Once I started climbing the stairs and reached the entrance I knocked and the door was answered by two Argentinian lesbians and when I told them I was staying there they shut the door in my face. So there I was sitting in a pitch black hallway swearing my head off, and if they didn’t have my credit card I would not have stayed. The lady across the hall heard me and asked of she could help and invited me in.
The apartment spelled like one big cigarette, and she spoke almost no English so she called for her son to interpret and out from the room emerges 6’2″ maybe 6’3″ Italian man in his thirties wearing Scooby-Doo pajamas, the one piece jumpsuit with the feet, the kind a five-year-old would wear. And if that wasn’t enough he was wearing over mighty mouse slippers that covered his entire foot, It was quite uncomfortable and kind of creepy as well.
It took thirty, thirty-five minutes before she finally reached the owners and they informed her they would be here in twenty minutes. She invited me stay while I waited and I was thinking ‘HELL NO!!!’ It was either sit in a dark hallway with motion censored lights or spend twenty minutes with Scooby-Doo, a mother smoking cigarettes as if they were candy and saying to myself – ‘yes, this really is happening.