An Arthur In Roma.

My friend Art is on location in Rome, photographing hotels for a certain enormous travel website. He sends photos, a story – and the heebie jeebies.

“On my way to the castle this weekend, I got stuck in a one-horse-town going door to door begging everyone to let me use their phone so I could get a hold of the hotel and get them to send a driver for me. There were no taxis available out there on a Sunday, and I was still half an hour away from the hotel. I just about got back on the train and went straight to the airport to come back home.”

But Art, you’re not in Vancouver. You obviously didn’t go home. You got to the castle.

“Finally…about four hours late and 10lbs lighter from sweating my ass off. It was 36 f*cking degrees outside and my Italian sucks.”

Looks like an awesome castle though! Must have been beautiful, serene and a nice place to spend a week.

“I was the ONLY guest there, out of a hundred empty rooms”.

Sounds spooky. You didn’t like, cruise around on a Big Wheel, find yourself talking to a bespectacled bartender or run into ghostly little girls in the hallways, did you?

“I drank the mini bar dry in order to get drunk enough to ignore all the shadows moving around in my room and fall asleep.”

Don’t blame the undead. You would have done that anyway.