From the April 2004 issue.
Surprise is the heart of adventure travel, and adventure was the keynote of our apartment rental with Rome Sweet Home (phone/fax +39066992 4833, e-mail info [at] romesweethome [dot] it or visit www.romesweethome.it) in September ’02.
Selected for its convenient location, average price and amenities suitable for two couples sharing expenses on a week-long visit to Rome, the apartment was reserved online five months in advance from the convenience of our home in California. We paid $1,670 for the week for four.
At the time, it did not seem too unusual that our e-mail to Rome Sweet Home a month in advance, seeking to affirm the details of our arrival, received a delayed response. We were advised that the apartment we had reserved was no longer available and that an alternative “luxury” apartment was available at the same price in the same area of Rome (Spanish Steps).
The online description included a picture of a small but attractive balcony and, while the website did not detail its “luxury” features, the apartment appeared adequate. The e-mail notice having come a week before our departure left us little latitude for negotiating an alternative.
On a warm Sunday afternoon, jet-lagged but grateful to have survived the enthusiastic-cabby gauntlet at the airport after a 14-hour flight, we were deposited at the doorstep of our apartment by the taxi (the cabby giving himself a 10-euro tip from our money, ostensibly for “luggage”).
The “keeper of the keys,” a college-age woman on motor scooter, arrived a half hour later (“Traffic,” she said), while we worried if the whole thing was a mistake. For the pleasure of being admitted to our apartment and oriented to its amenities, we paid a fee of €16, presumedly an “after hours” charge (it was daytime but on a weekend).
Our “luxury apartment” (identified online as “Margutta [132] [16]” and located at Via Alibert #14, Spagna, Rome) measured eight feet by eight feet and was six stories high including a “basement” room used for storage. One gained access to each level up a narrow, dizzying, stone stairway, which climbed up the 3-sided tunnel-like stairwell adjacent to the small living/sleeping spaces.
Jutting off from two bedrooms were bathroom facilities, and off yet another level was a kitchen cubicle. The top level was a somewhat more spacious “living room” that extended in one dimension a bit farther than the bedrooms below and opened onto a narrow but pleasant verandah. Closets were nonexistent, and in their stead were curiously placed full-length mirrors standing out from the wall about a foot, with clothes hangers hooked over a dowel cleverly mounted to a wall.
Initially, we thought we might have been the victims of a bait-and-switch scam, but we mellowed a bit when we observed that the bathroom and kitchen plumbing as well as the utilities were modern, as were the room furnishings, plus the place was clean. In Rome, we thought, it would have been easy to do worse.
After some searching, we did locate an advertised third bathroom. It was in the utility basement and full of construction supplies.
We also found the clothes washer, new and apparently in good working order. Since there was no clothes dryer and no place to hang a wet wash, it was likely to remain new, in good working order and unused. (This may have been the “luxury” item.)
Several days after a mysterious, late-evening, half-hour-long rhythmic pounding sound somewhere in the apartment, we received a note, addressed to Rome Sweet Home from a neighboring apartment dweller, complaining of running water noise and asking us not to use the bathroom at night. (Some of us had taken showers the evening of our arrival.)
The surprise of unanticipated novelty is the spice of adventure travel. The cultivated ability to handle surprise, undaunted, is the hallmark of the veteran traveler. Alas, we are still in training.
For additional unanticipated novelty, Rome Sweet Home provides the following services: car rental with Maggiore-National; transfers from/to airport; scooter rental; sightseeing tours; Naples apartments; Tuscany agritourism; Florence accommodation, and seaside accommodation.
Richard A. Rawson
Sacramento, CA
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