A slow entry into Milan
For myself, and many others, Airbnb has lost a lot of its usefulness and charm. Often, prices are not attractive, and hosts can be demanding.
My biggest gripe with Airbnb is that it’s often a hassle to get into the accommodation. If the place doesn’t have a lockbox, you need to arrange a meeting with the host to be able to receive the keys. If it does have a lockbox, it’s typical for the host to only disclose the code shortly before you are set to arrive, typically by electronic messenger, or through the platform’s chat facility. If you have limited connectivity, perhaps because you are in a foreign country, and don’t have data-roaming on your phone, this quickly becomes a pain in the ass.
So, I now avoid booking with Airbnb, and tend to stick to Booking.com. But, there, too, some properties are also not always that easily accessed.
I had picked my particular accommodation just outside of Milan’s main airport, on a stopover between arriving from Barcelona, and flying to Malaysia, because it was within walking distance of the airport. Accommodation in and around Milan isn’t cheap, but I had found a small apartment at a reasonable enough price, and I could walk there. Or so it seemed.
I had checked out the route beforehand, and though it wasn’t too appealing, as I would have to walk along a provincial road with no hard shoulder, it appeared doable enough.
However, leaving the airport on foot was not straightforward. What appeared to be the only available route was actually off limits for pedestrians. It had seemed a road, parallel to a highway, could get me to the earlier mentioned provincial road, but that road was fenced off, and the highway was off limit for walkers. But, I did have to get to my accommodation.
So, I used the soft shoulder along the highway to get going, only to then be met by a long and noisy tunnel. I walked as fast as I could, worried that police would pick me up and upend my plans of getting to Asia the next day.
The police didn’t show, and I got to the busy provincial road. But, without any shoulder, and the sides of the road dropping to a ditch on both sides, made this stretch even more of a challenge. But then, thankfully, a forest path veered off to the left, allowing me to take a pleasant and quiet, if roundabout, route into town.
The accommodation I had booked was using a lockbox. So, I needed a code to get in.
While still in Spain, I had asked, several times, for the host to provide the access codes. To no avail; “Daiana will give you to access codes on the day of your arrival”. But, by the time I set off from the airport, I still had received nothing.
I had come prepared, which is to say I had gotten myself an eSim with a roaming data plan. I still had what seemed like a sufficient amount of data left to be consumed before entering Italy, but as data usage can be a bit of a mystery, by the time I got to the accommodation, I had run out of data, and therefore was no longer able to receive the entry codes, nor contact the property.
So now I had to find a place with wifi. A restaurant? A cafe? A supermarket?
I continued my walk, and found that a Carrefour supermarket I was heading to no longer existed. A small corner store could offer no wifi, and a nearby pizzeria had shut down. The streets were empty.
So I had to keep walking. Now to a fancy hotel on the edge of town, which I found offered an open wifi network. I managed to contact the host, only to be told they needed a copy of my passport before they would give me the access codes. Now, booking.com’s chat, which I was using to talk to the host, doesn’t allow you to upload files, nor to send links, so this posed another set of challenges.
But, eventually, an annoying amount of time later, things were sorted, and I was given the codes. I could finally get into the apartment.
The next day, leaving Milan, I had to go through automated gates to scan my passport, which now seem to be in use everywhere. A sign explained I was not allowed to wear glasses or a hat. Nor gloves. Why would that be? Is this because cameras can perhaps pick up finger prints, as I later found in Abu Dhabi they indeed did, when I just had to wave my hand in front of a camera for it to pick up my prints?