Italy
At the Italian border, we stopped to show passports to armed officials, who interrogated my compartment-mate, and had a dog sniff our luggage. When I got to Milan, I hopped on the Malpensa shuttle bus, wondering whether Janet would still be there when I arrived. I arrived a little after 10h15, and wandered around for a bit. Before long I found Janet dozing in a seat. She was glad to see me, waiting for a bus to Turin, where our hotel room was reserved, as the bus folks told her that a bus to Turin was quicker than a bus back to Milan followed by a train to Turin.
She had been sick throughout her plane flight, so waiting around for the Turin bus on the hope I might still show up was fine with her. She wanted to ride together, so I exchanged her Turin ticket for a Malpensa, and we headed back to the shuttle bus.
Well, except that the shuttle bus return ticket I had was for a different company than the one Janet had. I went and bought yet another shuttle ticket, then tried to “give away” the odd ticket when the bus guys explained that we could just use it later, when we went back to the airport, as Janet was scheduled to do in two weeks.
Another hour or so back to Milan, a couple over to Turin, and we wandered through the rain to our cozy 70€ hotel room, which had a tiny private bath and a squeaky bed. The rainy afternoon was spent making the bed squeak, and when the weather broke, we wandered lost around Turin trying to find food, which proved more frustrating than we expected. Afterwards, we returned to our little nest, and spent some more time giggling about and provoking the squeaky bed.
