Europe Day 10: To Italy!

Thursday morning, we left early from the hostel and boarded a train for Bern, Switzerland, where we were supposed to have about 45 minutes to eat lunch at the station, and change trains for Torino, Italy. Unfortunately, our first train was about half an hour late (impressively, the only late train on the entire trip), so we ended up barely making our connection and didn't get lunch. The second train was another regional train without reserved seats or luggage room, but we all survived the trip. As an introduction to Italy, it was an interesting experience with a man being left at a station partway because he didn't have a ticket, and police chasing some boys through the train (we think they were panhandling on the train...hard to tell, since none of us spoke any Italian.) Finally got lunch late in the afternoon in the train station...


We found the hotel, where it turned out that the hotel itself only occupied floors 4-6 or so of a building. We carried our luggage up to the 4th floor, to the reception desk, only to find that we were actually in the next building over, also on the 4th floor...longest stair climb ever!


There was a lift (elevator), but it could only hold 3 people, and riding in it was one of the more terrifying experiences of the trip thus far...


The hotel itself was rather a disappointment as well. Some of the rooms were fine, but the room I was in was clearly a two person room with a two extra beds stuffed in, which left essentially no floor space. The doorknob on the bathroom was broken, the shower curtain (yes, curtain, not door...) was moldy, and the electrical was about as scary looking as the elevator...also, we ended up spending about $500 out of the contingency budget for group transit passes that were apparently not included with the hotel, regardless of what the hotel website led us to believe.


On the positive side, our room did have lots of closet space, our group had the entire floor to ourselves, and the free breakfast (in a room on our floor that we had entirely to ourselves) turned out to be excellent.
After walking around the neighborhood, a group of us went to a restaurant called 8 3/4, where I made the foolish choice of ordering something I had no idea what it was (Risotto, which I probably should have known). Was not very good...also discovered that they do not serve tap water at some places in Italy, so I somewhat accidently got a bottle of water for two euros. We also learned that it's standard to have a cover charge in Italian restaurants for bread at the beginning of the meal...another 2 euros. Good day overall, but a lot of frustrations...