We landed at Turin, Italy last night (6/6/7) (Turin was where the 2006 Winter Olympics were held). Our plane was 40mins late, which added a lil stress as we were arriving late at night and had to be at hotel by midnight! Our flights only cost us £0.01 + £5 ea for luggage check so really we can't complain! =) Anyway we had troubles finding the bus and trains had finished for the night but luckily we came across another couple so we shared taxi to town and got to hotel at 11.55pm. Hotel is lovely, fancier than we imagined! Lovely to have shower (shower at Lee-Ann's is currently broken so have been having baths!) It was raining when we arrived last night and was still raining this morning... just our luck since all I had packed were summer clothes. we braved it anyway as we only plan to spend 1 day in Turin. It poured down for most of the morning but cleared up beautifully mid-afternoon...let's hope the weather stays this way for our trip.
Italy so far is quite beautiful, very different from any other country we've been. We found it quite hard to communicate though which has been frustrating and even though we have the Lonely Planet Phrase Book/Dictionary it surprisingly takes more balls than we thought to actually approach someone. Tourism staff seem to be annoyed that we don't speak Italian, which scares us and we then fumble what we had planned to say. In saying that though we came across a lovely cafe worker at lunchtime who was very friendly. And I tried out an Italian phrase (where to eat cheap) on one of the hoteliers, and he understood and showed us around the corner for dinner. so YAY that helped the confidence. We had pasta for dinner...at an Irish Pub! it wasn't the best...but I guess we should aim for an Italian cafe if we want to eat good italian food!
Driving is shocking here. Cars parked all over the place. People going through red lights, tooting at each other. There are pedestrian crossings everywhere but I don't think they use then the same as home. plus we need to remember to look both ways cos who knows where the traffic is coming from. Roads are quite narrow, the 'alley' our hotel is down seems like a cobbled walk way - yet it's a road.
Went to a cinema museum today, quite alot of cool stuff to see. and wandered the streets. found a small supermarket...they sell all booze in it!! only €10 for a bottle jager!
anyways will post again soon with exciting Italy adventures I hope. Tomorrow we're travelling somewhere else. At this stage to Genoa a beachside place...
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