Sketchy Turin and Delicious Bologna

Smashed my head real good for this one

Monday morning we all woke up bright and early to get on the way to run errands and head off to Turin. Ken and Lilli tell us it’s about a 4 hour drive but with the errands it will be a little extra, so leaving at 9am we assume we should hit Turin by about 4pm or so. Obviously nothing ever happens as planned. We took Lilli’s mom to the airport, stopped to make some orders for the castle and then we thought we were on our way. I let Brittany take the mom’s spot in the front and Zane and I held down the fort in the back of the van like we were being smuggled into Italy. After ‘no more errands’ turned into ‘more errands,’ we get out of Grenoble by about 2pm (Grenoble is certainly not far from home). With numb asses from riding on the back floor of a Hyundai van, we were off. The drive was absolutely beautiful at least. We drove through the beginning of the Alps and lots of foothills. While the scenery was great, attempting to see it was like an obstacle course. I would scoot to one side of the van for a picture just in time to hit a switch back and get shot right back to where I came from. I did multiple somersaults in the back of the van that day. I have bruises and a sore back to prove it. But I got some awesome pictures, it was totally worth it. There were multiple times that I thought the van wasn’t going to make it up the hills. The hills were so steep and the turns so sharp, it sounded like we were going to lose something out of the bottom and go flying off the cliff. Obviously that didn’t happen, but I am pretty sure it was close. After god only knows how many hours of driving, we hit Turin at 8:45pm. Almost a full 12 hour day in the back of a van…sweet mother mary, that was terrible. And this table that we drove to pick up turned out to be a tiny table that could be found at any thrift store and the guys that were waiting for us were in a back alley and it looked like we interrupted their drug deal. Turin looked totally sketchy at night. What a great time to be dropped off in a new country where we know nothing of the language. We manage to find a hostel, say goodbye and head straight for beer and pizza. The guy making the pizza had a gigantic gut, 2 inch thick glass on his glasses and looked like his name was Mario. Clearly the pizza would be good, and it was. Thank you Italy for my pizza overload the last few days. We bought tickets to Bologna for the next day and headed to bed. In the morning we got an early start and figured we would pick up our tickets before some exploring. Long story, but we got hardcore taken advantage of by both France and Italy in about an hour. Our tickets could only be picked up back in France or by going to Milan (which would require more tickets) so we had to buy the exact same ticket again. Bad start to the day. After that we wanted the hell out of Turin and to go straight for Bologna. The train ride was one of my favorite parts. I made friends with the girl next to me (Marianna) and had a little Italian lesson, which made a HUGE difference. I was actually able to make sense to people when we got to Bologna. Not much, but some. And Alberto (another guy in our car) decided to be a part of this lesson. Marianna and Alberto both did not speak too much English, so lots of hand gestures were used. It all worked out well enough. By the end of the train ride, Alberto had shared pizza and a sandwich and Marianna had given us nearly a full bag of crackers. I love Italians! Even strangers just want to feed me. We part ways and start looking for hostels again. We find a super cute 1 star spot (I know 1 star and cute don’t match up, but having our own bathroom/shower was amazing), drop our stuff off and get to exploring. Most of the exploring was of bars and a few clothing stores. After a few hours of walking, we grab a nice bottle of wine and head to the roof of our hostel to celebrate our first night in Bologna. In the morning we buy tickets for an overnight ride home leaving at 11pm. Since it would be an 8.5 hour train ride, we might as well be asleep for it. With it being 9:30am now, we have lots of time to see the city. We walked for a solid 9 hours that day with backpacks on. Luckily, it was mainly underwear and my toothbrush in my bag, but it was still extra weight. We drank lots of amazing coffee, ate too much gelato and saved some appetite for our fancy Italian dinner that night. No menu that we looked at had good old spaghetti bolognaise though…we were in Bologna right? I ended up with tagliatelle, Brittany got tortellini and Zane got cotoletta and of course we got wine and tiramisu to close out the night. I don’t think I could say it was better than my fancy French meal but it was delicious. After something classy, I was forced to trash us back down. I bought a bottle of wine to drink in the park at night. I have way too many homeless person ideas that go through my head. I figured it would help with sleeping on a pullout train bed and that it did.