All roads lead to Nonna 💜

S. Italy tour – Chia

Leaving Rome felt good and our car, a Jeep hybrid, was a great pick with lots of room for our bodies and veritable items.

Goodbye big city, hello small towns.

We picked Bomarzo because it was the closest town to our next adventure – Sacro Bosco, Park of the Monsters.

Never heard of it? Neither had we.

Quick scroll through Instagram and boop there it was.

As soon as I saw it I was hooked. I proceeded to plead my case to the team and hooked them as well.

We’d reserved an apartment on booking.com that showed it to be 1 km from the park and looked nice.

🚩 An apt for 4 people for 100 CAD? Wow!

Ya. Wow. Hello first red flag.

🚩 the directions were wrong

No matter how many ways we entered the street info it took us 8km away.

The address it took us to, must be our place right? Yet it appeared to be next door to a garage bar/fight club.

We’re friendly people, we can make friends.

However the lock on the door and the closed shutters were not something we could overcome.

In disbelief we continued to knock on the door.

Failing that we decided to have lunch and await a response from our host who was MIA.

🚩 Nada, nothing, no answer on the cell no text. Crickets.

The town, Chia, was a beautiful settlement high atop a cliff.

It being Sunday we were happy to find a Trattoria that was open and had seating.

I say that because yes they were open but no they didn’t really seem to want our business. We ignored there trepidation and pointed to an empty table.

This pretty much set the tone for our time here.

The waiter refused to accept our Italian so we talked slow and used hand gestures which he LOVED (not).

The beer was warm, the wine was meh. They chose our appetizers for us even tho we ordered something else.

BUT…

The food we did order came and it was clearly home made and maybe the best pasta we’ve had on the trip.

So good in fact I did not have time to take a picture of anything but the ravioli.

They started to warm up to us.

Not enough for us to feel comfortable letting the mean waiter see us change our plates around once served to the wrong people but we saw some people smile as they walked by. Probably at the people behind us but we were having fun so…🤷🏻‍♀️

Checked our phones to find zero messages from the host of our apt.

Ok off to the Monster Park.

It was 15 minutes after we entered the park that the message came in in my 6% battery life phone.

Come now, my person is on site to meet you go here…they will leave in 10 minutes.

This was also written in Italian. Not ideal but we found a willing translator and took off immediately.

GPS showed us to be 6 minutes away.

We booted it over there.

The GPS took us to a road that ended at an elevator tower and 4 Nonnas (Italian Grandmothers) out for a walk.

We didn’t give the elevator much thought cause there’s no way that a) it worked and b) we were meant to use it to get to our place.

The Nonna’s played charades with us pointing at the car and doing a no no sign with their finger then pointing at their legs and nodding yes.

Message received.

It was a little hectic and we were running out of cell battery and time.

I called the lady waiting for us – she answered 🙏

I gave the phone to the Nonna.

Nonna was not sure how to use it but once they started talking it seemed to be ok.

My take away was that she told the host we were here and asked her to come get us.

When she got off the phone she pointed up.

Up to the elevator. There, at the top appeared a lady waving at us.

Up we went.

Here’s the Nonnas at the bottom making sure we got up there.

God bless the Nonnas❤️

We were lead off to our apartment.

Many more steps inside. Many steep steps.

The place was cute. They put the effort into it.

This would be our first authentic traditional stay in a medieval town and it was very quaint.

The shaky railing and the uneven floors with the short and very steep stairs to the bedrooms were not mentioned in any of the reviews or description. Weird huh. They gave us all some challenges but we survived.

The Nonnas multiplied down below to make sure the guys moved the car off their walking path.

We might have made the local paper – quite the chaotic day for Bomarzo!