August 3, 2013

Saturday, August 3, 2013

                We woke up later this morning, which was a really nice change, to be honest!  Ilaria came in late from a party, but neither of us heard her.  Definitely an awesome Air BnB host…and she even left out a full spread for breakfast, which was awesome!

                Our trains were around 1pm, so we hung out a bit, organizing things and eating our awesome breakfast before meandering over to the train station.  Shawn’s train was right on time…and off he went to Rome to spend his last night before flying home.  (However, I later heard that it was not that smooth as the train broke down and it took hours to get home.  AND the flights from Montreal to Edmonton were canceled, to this was far from smooth either!)

                My train was 40 minutes late arriving, which meant I was a bit stressed getting into Turin as I had promised my Air BnB hosts that I would arrive at their place by 6:30pm.  The train station was busy because of all of the 20,000+ participants in the World Masters Games that were arriving today.  And because it was Saturday, a lot of the shops were closed…which meant I could not find a tram ticket machine anywhere.  I was quite frustrated!  Thankfully I did find one and I took the tram and asked lots of questions to make sure I finally got off at the right location.

                The couple I am staying with are great.  Their house/flat is huge.  The access to the tram is awesome.  BUT they do not speak a word of English!  So, when I arrived, it was Italian 101.  I got out my little dictionary that mom and dad lent me and I started looking up words in attempts to make a sentence.  Normally, I understand what they are telling me because of Spanish and French, but that doesn’t make it easier to reply, unfortunately! 

                After about an hour of intense Italian, I managed to convey that I needed to go register for the games at this specific location – but now there wasn’t much time to do so.  Thankfully they drove me there so I could get that done.  As well I found Carrefour, a large grocery store, which was great considering I hadn’t eaten anything since our brekkie this morning!

                Tomorrow is the big day…of driving a standard car all the way to France. 

-Allison