Farnsniente

Fruit basket and wine to apologize for my mistake. Hm.

Hotel res: Right day, wrong month!

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in
📍 Asti, Italy

Photos

Trip index

Summary

One new thing in France that I will not miss is the large number of young men riding (silent) electric scooters at full speed down the sidewalk. Other than that, I’m sorry to be leaving this wonderful country but am looking forward to a couple of weeks in Italy! We had a beautiful three plus hour bus ride through the Alps to Turin then immediately hiked to Hertz to pick up our car. Drove to the town of Asti in the Piedmont region, home to the famous Asti Spumante and Moscato d’Asti wines. Beautiful hotel by a big park. Dinner at a nearby street fair of foods from around the world.

Details

Some relocation days are minor, this one’s a biggie. We’re leaving France (Grenoble) and bussing through the Alps to Italy (Turin). Our bus isn’t scheduled to head out til mid day so we have a relaxing morning prepping and packing. We do a bit more grocery shopping for our lunch on the bus today. I buy a beer, figuring it’s a 3.5 hour ride, surely I’ll sober up by the time we get our rental car in Turin. 

It’s still spitting rain as we hop into our Uber to the bus stop at the main Grenoble train station. Our driver speaks perfectly understandable French and we gab the entire trip. He knows where the FlixBuses stop, which is a great help to us. Where those buses stop is the same place as the buses from a dozen other companies, so I need to look for the FlixBus-logo’ed buses. An email I just got says “your bus won’t be a FlixBus (nor is it likely to have WiFi) so be forewarned. 

There are signs at each bus parking lot with the bus number and destination, so finding our bus isn’t hard. We load our luggage into the seedy underbelly of the vehicle and clamber aboard. We have assigned seating and our seats include an unobstructed window, which is nice. 

Lunch onboard is good but awkward. My “beer” turns out to be a very large can of fermented cherry juice, 16% alcohol. It’s dreadful, like cough syrup. I just have to hold this can for another two and a half hours and I can throw it out, oh joy. 

En route we see rain and sun, industrial areas and crops. And we see lots of mountains, though mostly in clouds. Our ears pop as we go higher and we go through a lot of tunnels. The longest is the Freud tunnel. Signs heading into the 13 km tunnel recommend observing the right following distance and listening to your radio. It’s one lane in each direction with no barrier between lanes. The speed’s not fast (70 kph – 43 mph) but most vehicles are huge buses or trucks, so it’s exciting. 

It’s easy to imagine going between Italy and France in a rental car, maybe some other time. In Turin the bus stops, though it’s not the bus’s final destination so we hurry off, recollecting our bags from the under-bus stowage. We’re happy that they didn’t walk off. We have a bit of a walk in front of us. 14 minutes to the Hertz office. Please be open! 

As we walk we pass lots of other people walking and dragging their suitcases. The Hertz office is at the train station and that’s also the destination for our fellow pedestrians. The adjacent roads are busy and the cars are driving in the characteristic Italian manner.  We’re sure they’re not supposed to “block the box” in making their lefthand turns, but they do, and they get stuck and then other turning cars can’t go, so everyone uses their horn. It’s great fun (wink). I can’t wait to be driving (not). 

Our car is another Ford Kuga, so fairly good sized, think Toyota RAV-4 or Honda CR-V. It’s not only hybrid but plug-in hybrid. This should be fun! On the roads it’s strange. There are two lanes of traffic, one in each direction. Next you have a row of trees on each side. Then two more lanes of traffic outside of that, one in each direction. At intersections it’s chaos. I need to turn left. I think I have right of way and these oncoming cars will stop, so I go. I don’t have right of way and their horns let me know in no uncertain terms. 

We’re headed to Asti, an hour away. We should be outside of Turin in no time right? (Wrong). Eventually (thankfully) we are out of town on a good auto-strata. In Asti we find our hotel and there’s a parking spot right in front. Now this is a good omen! Inside the tall, nice madam looks for our reservation (and looks and looks). She (and I on my phone) find it at about the same time. It IS for the 15th, but for June 15th, not May. Whoops!

Luckily she does have a room for tonight, but not for tomorrow night. Well crap. She feels bad about the mixup (say what!? it was my mistake!) so she offers us a glass of wine. Two glasses. Really big glasses and it’s divine. She still feels bad so she arranges for big bowl of fruit to be sent to our room. When we get there we find that also means a yummy bottle of red Barolo. I need to screw up more often!

Settled in our (very nice) room I contact our next hotel. Can we come one day early? Nope. I eventually do find a place between the ‘not too far distant’ cities for tomorrow night, whew. 

On the drive in we passed what appears to be a big festival with lots of booths. Yes, says madam, it’s the international food fair, once a year. Walk over there, a few blocks away, in the damp, cool evening air. Between the hotel and the fair in a big park. The “International food fair” (Mercato Europeo) is indeed going on this weekend only. So many booths. German, American (smash burgers), Polish, Austrian, French (biscotti Bretoni), Budapest, Scottish, Irish, Spanish, Mexican (churros), Greek, Indian, on and on. Italian regions were represented: il Piemontese,  Siciliani, Napoliani, We inspect it all, twice. We agree in German: bratwurst, bread, sauerkraut, and beer. 

After dinner we walk. Karen heads towards a trash bin to throw out her napkin but stops quickly. A guy is peeing on it. (And peeing and peeing.) He’d apparently had a lot to drink. She choses another waste receptacle. 

We go by a cadre of stand-alone vending machines. They aren’t selling cigarettes, but with the right amount of Euros you can buy a beer (no ID required). The machines also offer coffee, of course, but also cookies and also milk (shelf stable). We walk past where the annual Asti Palio is run. Tomorrow is supposed to be sunny all day so we’ll check all that out tomorrow. For now we close the roulladen blinds for complete darkness before heading off to bed. 

Photos

One last view of Grenoble as we take an Uber to the train station to catch our bus to Turin, Italy. The sky is still spitting rain. Time to get the heck out of Dodge.
I had an aisle seat on the bus so I didn’t take too many pictures. As we get into Italy I do see these fortified bunkers, maybe from WW II?
We go through lots of tunnels, the longest of which is this one, which is 13 KM long. Just two lanes, one in either direction. Speed limit is 70 KPH (43 MPH). Mostly very straight with traffic lights every short while, letting you know if it’s OK to keep barreling ahead or not.
We saw snow in the mountains (up high) and went through quite a few tolls. The width of the bus is just a smidge narrower than the width of the toll booth lanes. We got through no problem. The only toll I ever saw was like 45 euros. Not cheap.
The rain in France gave way to mostly blue sky towards Italy. We did get to see some views of snow, but it seems like the snow season is on its way out.
We saw a lot of Alps geography without any towns. Some that we did see were fairly small. Some seemed ancient and maybe now ghost towns. This one was doing fine. We saw some ski area-looking things. It’s a good way to make money.
We had one intermission, er, bus stop, on our three hour plus drive. I got to take a picture of our “not FlixBus” FlixBus. It indeed didn’t have any power at the seats or WiFi, sadly. It was comfortable and smelled fairly decent, other than when we brought out our stinky cheese from France.
On the route over the Alps we did see some cars but mostly trucks and buses. And trucks carrying cars, and trucks carrying buses. It seems there were almost all combinations.
In Turin we were ready to get out of Turin (sorry, Turin). We got our Hertz car, an automatic and a hybrid (and a plug-in hybrid at that. The key fob says the car is blue but the lady at the Hertz desk says to ignore that, the car is black (yes it is).
In Asti we find out that the reservation I made for this hotel I made for June, not for May (as it is now). Whoops! The hotel manager could get us in (to their last room) for one night, but sadly no more than that. We think we got the best room, actually. Nice!
At dinner time we hiked the couple of blocks over to the “Mercato Europeo” (the International Food Fair). Ready to eat food from so many countries. They’re here this weekend, then next weekend they’ll be in Verona and then in Bologna. It’s a thing.
We opt for Bratwurst and sauerkraut (with beer and lots of mustard). Quite good but it’s in the upper 40s and the food cooled down very quickly.
We didn’t have dessert but were tempted by this treat from Budapest. It’s like a layered roll, the shape and size of a paint roller pad. You get the roll and then they roll that hot thing in chocolate or cinnamon or or or. Lots of choices. They’re really big. Groan.
On the walk after dinner we see a bank of vending machines at the edge of the parking lot. There’s coffee, of course. There are cold beverages (including beer, no ID check needed). There’s cookies (and milk!). There are no cigarettes. I guess some progress has been made.
It’s rainy today but supposed to be sunny tomorrow. Here in Italy they have lots of flowers, like this huge bank of roses, but they’re OK to give equal time to the weeds. We’re not in France (or Germany).
The lady desk manager felt so bad about the mess up with the reservation that she gave us two huge glasses of wine, a bottle of wine, and a big bowl (basket) of fruit and chocolates. Wait, what screw up? That was my mistake. Why are you giving US gifts??