Hello. Mrs Giles here. Please make up your own train numbers for this instalment. :) The tale of the first stage of our journey can be found here if you missed it.
On Sunday morning, having left Nice, we travelled first along the Mediterranean coast to the Italian border station of Ventimiglia. Mr Giles’s verdict on the Côte d’Azur? ‘All right, but not as good as Dawlish.’ (Readers of any British railway periodicals – and their wives - will know that at least one picture of a train on the Dawlish sea wall is compulsory content.)
It was at Ventimiglia station that I made one of my favourite discoveries of the trip to date: Nutella in 5kg jars! Hello!
And thence to Milan on the ninth train of our expedition. I was keen to sample Milan’s legendary coffee, so, having purchased our next set of tickets, we scoured the station building for a suitable establishment. I wasn’t disappointed. Not only was my caffe americano delicious, it came with eminently scrapbookable paper napkins with the words ‘Stazione Centrale di Milano’ on them. Excellent.
From Milan, we caught the train towards Domodossola (a double-decker one, no less), changing at Novara for Orta san Giulio. We were met at the station by a friendly taxi driver who dropped us as near to the hotel as he was permitted to drive (Orta is pedestrianised to all but a tiny amount of local traffic) and gave us walking directions in ebullient Italian, complete with much waving of arms which didn’t leave us much the wiser. We trundled off happily down a cobbled path in vaguely the right direction, whipped out the guidebook and were in the right place within five minutes. Success!
(Our room is behind those window boxes on the left.)
Our hotel isn’t a single building but a collection of them: a few bedrooms in a place down this alley, a few more there, reception on the main throughfare, a breakfast buffet at a cafe on the main piazza… all very civilised and friendly. And speaking of the breakfast… impressive. Breads, hams, and cheeses in abundance; cook-your-own eggs, bacon and sausages; cereals, yogurts and fruit; and, to our amusement, a dessert table. Tiramisu, anyone?
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