Day Twenty Two ~ Friday, May 17

Last journey: Italy. We had a late morning wake up. We just had to check-in for breakfast by 10 a.m. That meant walking by Hollis and Christina’s room and showing them you were alive, regardless of desire for breakfast.
Some people went to town, I personally got a little more sleep. The only other requirement was we had to be ready to leave by 11:15 to catch an 11:45 bus. We fumbled a little bit here. Little surprises such as stripping beds of sheets and taking out the trash caught us by surprise so that we ended up having to book it over to the bus stop. We managed to catch it. It was a coach bus, just like the one that took us up to and down from Champex. I guess mainland Europe doesn’t do Pace bus style public busses.
After struggling through a bit of traffic, we finally made it up to the tunnel. The whole time we were in it, I didn’t feel like we were driving under Mont Blanc (or Monte Bianco here in Italy) but we were. The tunnel took a good 10-15 minutes to get through.
Once on the other side, we got our first glimpse of Italy. We could see into the valley and the old mountain town Courmayeur. We got off the bus, and made a beeline for the hotel. Dang this place is nice. All the way from personal reading lamps to a towel warmer, this place has just about everything. The one thing it is missing is hot water. Many people have complained about lukewarm to cool showers by now.
We set our stuff down, relaxed for a bit, and then were set fre to explore the town. We found that Italy likes to close for the afternoon as well. Very few places were open. We found one salad/pizza sandwich shop open. The food was good, but not what I thought I was getting. I thought I had ordered a pizza sandwich (as the restaurant had called it) but I instead got a salad that consisted of approximately 7 slices of tomato and 6 limps of wet mozzarella cheese. It was still pretty good.
From there we went to a Gelato shop, and it all looked amazing (I mean, why wouldn’t Italian Gelato be amazing?) I didn’t get any though, because they wouldn’t take cards. After that we ran into other people, and I joined a few others in heading back to the hotel. I did some writing in my personal journal and then went out to find dinner. We left later than originally planned, because as we discovered, restaurant didn’t really open for dinner until about 7. We managed to find one open a little earlier.
I ordered the “spaghetti al pesto” which was just amazing. There was a freshness to the taste that I’ve never tasted before. I suspect it was a second spice mix in, but whatever it was, it was superb!
Then we returned to the hotel, where I joined in a game of hearts. I was the one who broke 100, but not without dragging everyone else down quite a bit, including someone else close to 100 as well.

-Joseph Bruner