Mom's Mistake

Back to Asti, Italy

We were having another relaxed morning, anticipating the unusually good buffet breakfast at the hotel, when Meg suddenly realized our train departure was not actually at 11:02 a,m., but 9:02 a.m! Uh Oh! We switched gears and focused on shoving our belongings into their nylon stuff sacks, knowing there was little chance we could get to the canal, catch the water bus, and get to the station in less than 30 minutes.

Our "bus" stop

What was amazing is, even after the helpful, English speaking help from the ticket agent and conductor, Meg and I were still pretty unclear about the situation. The handwritten times and additional amounts the agent had initialed on the blank ticket didn’t seem very official, but he had taken our credit card. If we can be this confused in Italy, I can hardly wait for India.

As we were making our way to the mainland railway station, I commented on the extremely low price of tickets between the mainland and Venice --  1.25 euro each. Dex remembered me saying something similar regarding the ease of getting in and out of Monaco, but came up with “Moronaco” instead. Hence the new Hoornaert family phrase, “don't be a Moronaco.”  This word almost found its way into the title of the blog, but I thought better of it -- who knows, I might make a mistake someday too….

Long story short, we caught a later train leaving Venice, using the extra time to fill our stomachs. By the time we got to Torino, however, we were on empty again. We relied heavily on the fancy, automated vending machine -- ham and cheese sandwiches, cookies, yogurt, and steaming cups of milk, hot chocolate, and a macchiato con cacao for me! (Meg Note: It was 95 degrees and about 90% humidity - I was very much disagreeing with the plan of the hot beverages... until I tried them. While I didn't actually purchase one - I was mightily tempted and that's saying something for someone who likes her beverages icy cold in January.)

Expresso, cream, chocolate...mmm

As a side note, we're really beginning to appreciate the difference in WiFi speeds here as we are so dependent on our devices: navigation, reservations, banking…. And, I was really excited to hear about Komoot's announcement of a new release... with improved voice commands. That would be awesome considering the normal commands for negotiating a roundabout are “take the next right, then turn right...now turn right (to enter the circle)...now turn right (to exit).  Technically correct, but not particularly helpful given most circles have three or more exit points. We’ve done complete loops on multiple occasions. Wheee!

When we got to Asti, it was nice to walk back into the Hotel Lis and have the attendant just hand us the keys to the same room we'd had 4 days earlier. Ah, just like home. I took advantage of the couple hours before dinner to finally install the new tires from Cogolin that I've been carrying around for over 200 miles.  

As we were primarily focused on rearranging our bags to get ready for riding again, we were not particularly imaginative for dinner, returning to the same nearby pizza and kebab shop. Why mess with a good thing. I'm a bit concerned about our family, though -- every single member passed on the gelato tonight in favor of an early return to the hotel and reading Johnny Tremain. I trust, however, that situation will soon rectify itself.