The morning started with Dave finishing the blog, which took longer than usual because the internet at the apartment is not very stable.
Dave’s version of the morning: Our next piece of excitement was the drilling into the stone/brick wall in the apartment upstairs that is being renovated. That was the last straw for Linda. We will leave this apartment tomorrow and check into a new apartment in the afternoon.
Linda’s version of the morning: I didn’t sleep well and in the middle of the night I got up to take some pain meds and do some hip/ low back exercises on the floor. This sounds fairly ordinary but the flooring in our apartment was made of some kind of hard pebbly plastic. Fun. Neither of us were very pleased with this place – not clean enough, not comfy enough (what?? No couch??), just Not Enough!! In the morning, the construction noise started from upstairs. We were warned just yesterday by the host right before moving in that there might be debris falling from the ceiling!! At 10 am, I informed a not-too-pleased Dave that I was looking at new places. He took a shower and came out more agreeable. We went out for caffe and pastry and found a new place fairly quickly, just a few meters up the same street!
After dealing with that, we headed out to get something to eat at about 11:15. Not the way the day was supposed to go. As we ate our cannoli, we decided we would take a quick trip to Aosta today.
We grabbed a train that was scheduled to leave at 13:25. It finally left the Torino Porto Nuovo station at 13:35. We recognized that we certainly raised the average age on the train.
What a day! Sometimes a surprising change in plans is fun. This was the day we were going to do tomorrow but with the apartment check out/ check in required for Tuesday, we decided to do Aosta today.
Four hours of train ride (that had beautiful views, but lousy windows to try to capture) for a two-hour exploration in Aosta, a gorgeous mountain town that is Italian with Swiss chalet architecture and food that is mostly French. It was magical. We want to go back! Their tourist season is, probably, biggest in winter.
We had planned to eat, look around town and maybe do a little shopping. Linda found a great yarn shop but couldn’t afford the luggage space. Dave even offered to get another suitcase! We walked awhile and saw that the 4- star Bistro we were hoping to have late lunch at was closed (website said open till 22:00) we opted for a sandwich shop on Piazza Emile Chanoux across from Town Hall, only to find that they weren’t serving food. The Italian way is coffee and pastry in am (till noon); lunch noon till 15:00; dinner 19:00 to whenever. We’ve been here almost 5 weeks and really should know better.
We shared some great local wines (Petit Arvine and Torrette) then on the walk back towards the train, quickly grabbed ‘take away’ prosciutto and fungi pizza that was folded over (a 12-inch by 5-inch rectangle). And a bottle of water for the train trip back. Dave was anxious to get back so we could finish with our laundry and pack to move tomorrow.
The train trip home was uneventful and arrived about five minutes late. That’s on-time, right? We walked back to the apartment and quickly realized that we made the right decision to leave tomorrow. We were greeted by dust and rock everywhere. We made the mistake of leaving our suitcases open, so it was in there, too. Linda got the worst of that. Oh, and on the bed, too. Yuck! Dave will be suggesting to our host that he put plastic below the exposed beams to catch the stuff.
In an effort to calm our nerves, we headed out to find GELATO! Fortunately, we were successful. Dave had Salted Caramel and Tiramisu; Linda had Fig with Ricotta, Almond Cream, and Hazelnut. Time to call it a night. Here’s looking forward to a better Tuesday.
2022 Italy Vacation 