Thursday, November 16, 2006

Accomodation Woes in Turin

Turin is one of my favourite cities in Italy. I love visiting...it’s unlike any other Italian city & I highly recommend a visit. If you ever do go there, take the time to wander the streets, sample the great coffee (it’s the home of Lavazza coffee) & taste the chocolates (it’s home of Gianduja chocolate...my favourite) that make this city famous.

So...imagine my surprise when I had all sorts of difficulties trying to sort out accommodation for the three nights I wanted to stay. Even the hostel was full !! The penny dropped a few phone calls & so I enquired if there was any sort of festival happening at that time. Sure enough…the “Salone del Gusto” was in town (more about that in an upcoming post).

I persisted & managed to find a hotel near the train station (& at a greatly inflated price).

I rock up to the hotel on the Friday & stumble into the reception area (loaded with all my packs). I state that I have a booking...the receptionists checks his computer & proceeds to inform me that they have me arriving on Sunday for three nights.

You can imagine the thoughts running through my mind at this point: I’m in Turin over the weekend; there’s a food festival on & there’s no accommodation !! *@#% !! What the *@#% am I going to do now ??

The receptionist was quick to point out that they did have one room, but that it was a “small, small” room. Would I like to have a look at it ?? Yeah !! Sure !! Why not ??

Well...this “small, small” room turned out to be bigger than the combined size of the rooms in Perugia & Milan (with some space to spare). After thinking about it for a total of 100 nanoseconds, I said that this room would be fine. You want to know the other thing ?? It turned out to be nearly 30 Euro less (a night) than the room I’d already booked !!

Now that we have that little story out the way, the next series of posts will be about the food & wine things I got up in & around Turin.

Until then...take care.

Gonzo

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