Thursday 9th June: Hazy and warm, 18°C to 30°
Turin to Alba: Train from Turin to Cavallermaggiore, then Bus to Alba
Accommodation: Albergo San Lorenzo
Lunch under a shady tree in Alba
Left over risotto on a plastic plate
View from Albergo San Lorenzo
Ian's priority - the beer menu
Jenny samples the local wine
Girl talk after a few wines
A travelling day today. Train from Turin to Cavallermaggiore then bus to Alba. Today's the day we all meet up in Alba. We had a lovely Italian dinner with our friends Donna, Milton Jenny and Graham, then waited until 10.30pm for our rental bikes to be delivered.
It's an early start to the day at 5am with a cup of tea followed by several hours of catching up with emails then breakfast with coffee. The WiFi at Inn Vanchiglia is amazingly fast, almost as fast as our cable at home. So it’s a good time to chat with Bonnie who has just arrived home from a 3am to 11am shift at work and is keen for input into their electrical wiring for their new house. We'd studied the electrical plans she sent earlier and had a string of suggestions.
After an hour of cleaning our Turin apartment and re-arranging our stuff into 2 backpacks to put in our Salvos suitcase, we're ready to roll up the street to the train station. Bouncing along the cobblestones, there's bits of plastic flying off the suitcase, but we only need it to last us a few more k's along the streets of Menton and Paris before we get home. A short detour to the Montura hiking shop to get a third gas can. Couldn't possibly let Graham not carry a can, and once we start hiking the GR5 in a weeks time, there'll be no sports stores, or many supermarkets for that matter.
The queue at the Turin railway station for our 6 euro train/bus ticket is painfully slow. There's variably one and sometimes five staff behind the counter depending on who is having a water/toilet/coffee/tea/chat break with 50 people in line waiting. We took a queue ticket and waited 35 minutes for our ticket to be called to the counter. There were self service machines on the platform, but all in Italian, and we weren't sure if we needed two separate tickets for the bus and train. Good thing we weren't in a hurry today.
We catch the 11.25am train to Cavallermaggiore, then change to a bus which stops to pick up college students from Bra. The bus is so packed that the driver has to stop some students getting on. At 1 pm we're in Alba and use Ian's GPS to find our way to Albergo San Lorenzo, about one k away through the narrow streets of Alba. The hotel is closed. It doesn't take long to find a patch of grass under a shady tree watching the cars spin round the round-about while we eat lunch of leftover risotto and tomatoes.
By the time we get back to the hotel, it’s opened and we're the first of the 6 of us to check in, followed by Graham and Jenny who arrived on a later bus, and Donna and Milton who caught the train to Bra, then cycled into Alba. Time for a get together chat in our room before checking on the status of the delivery of our rental bikes which was supposed to happen sometime soon after 2pm. Several emails later with Gennaro from Veloce Bike Rentals, and the delivery stretches from late afternoon to early evening.
At 6.30pm, with directions from reception, we're off to a restaurant, Civico Undici (Social Food), that's also highly recommended by Trip Advisor. The place is empty and we grab a large table inside as it's been drizzling after a short thunderstorm. The boys have a cold beer, the girls a wine. The hors d'oeuvres keep coming for the next hour - every Italian taste, enough for a meal many times over. When it’s time to order a main meal, we're full. The food was fabulous, the service super friendly and at 9.30pm when we're leaving, the restaurant is packed with locals who have just arrived - late eaters are our Italians.
By 10pm, still no bikes and we're so tired, we go for a short walk around the streets, alive with young kids playing as kids used to do decades ago at home. We're amazed that most Italians in this part of the world are not overweight, in fact they're very finely boned. Back at the hotel and Gennaro has arrived with our 4 rental bikes and panniers. A quick unload, and payment of the remaining 50% of 448 Euro (about 55AUD per day per person), and we're in bed.