Bari Chaos

 

We arrived in Bari, Italy from Valencia, Spain.  It was a late flight and got us into Bari about 9:00 pm.  I had booked a B&B for the night so we could pick up a rental car the next day. We took the wildest taxi ride ever from the airport to the B&B downtown. The driver passed everyone and drove in the middle of the street most of the time.  He drove with his bumper almost touching the  car in front of him.  We just hung on for the ride.  He finally stopped at a metal gate on a narrow street and said we had arrived.

We stood outside the gate which was an office building with consulates and attorney offices.  We were not sure what we got ourselves into standing on the dark street with our luggage. We were doing a self check in and the directions were like a treasure hunt.  Domenico (only speaks Italian) from the B&B sent us instructions.  This is exactly what he wrote: " Once to the main door downstairs intercom Alighieri97 and i will open, the go to the left, Bside, 1 floor, by elevator just push a button between T and 1". Somehow, we managed to get to the B&B which was on the second floor of an office building. We put a code in to enter the B&B. The door opened to a tiny space which they called the common area.  We found our keys to the room on the table just as Domenico had told us.  This was the tiniest room we have ever been in.  It had a full bathroom but you could barely get around the queen sized bed to go to the balcony. I am ashamed of my VRBO skills in selecting this B&B.  The pictures looked good, the recommendations were good, and the price was Ok.  Rick has threatened to take away my duties as the lodging scheduler.

The B&B secured a ride for us to the airport to get our rental car.  Manuel picked us up in his well worn car and took us away.  We arrived at what we thought was the car rental place, which turned out to be the car return and the car lot.  It was in this industrial area and they were working out of construction trailer.  After waiting for 45 minutes, they explained we were at the wrong office and told us to wait for a van to pick us up and take us to the "other office". As you can see, this did not make me happy.

We were not the only people at the wrong office.  An entire van full of people also made the same mistake to reserve a rental car with this company.  We waited in line for 30-40 minutes with everyone else to rent a car.  We then were loaded back on the van and taken back to the indusial area to actually get a car. Rick had a tiny piece of paper with a number on it that he got from the rental office.  When we showed up at the industrial site, they took our tiny, torn corner of paper and gave us a car. This was the craziest business transaction we have ever seen...oh no that's not true....we live on Bonaire and have been through worse.

We had been at this car rental crap for hours.  We just want to get away from Bari and see the coast of Italy.  This is the tiny town of Torre a Mare. It's a lovely sea side town of 2,500 people.  It has a beautiful park in the middle of the village and a big sea wall lined with seafood restaurants.  We were finally where we wanted to be.