Thursday

Rainy day here today. And cool. October. Maybe my favorite month.

A couple of Top Ten lists to wrap up coverage of the trip to Italy.

First, how about the Top Ten Surprising Things that I encountered. Not necessarily in order of importance:

1. Not a lot of billboard advertising on the highways.
2. No Starbuck's! Until Copenhagen 's airport.
3. When you order water at a restaurant, order naturale, or you'll get seltzer!
4. Cheap wine in Italy tastes like cheap wine in the USA.
5. The tourist shops sold the same junk as you can get at S.Dak's Wall Drug.
6. Don't expect to find anything open between noon and three.
7. VISA works everywhere.
8. Cabbie's in Turin use Garmin's too.
9. Road construction hassles are not limited to the USA.
10.Different towns (Verona and Turin) have different personalities.

And for a little bit of good humor, how about the Top Ten rip-offs for the trip?

1. That 33 Euro ($50!) toll for the tunnel coming out of the Alps.
2. The Turin hotel's 6 Euro ($9) per hour Internet fee.
3. The Milan hotel's 11 Euro ($16) per 24 hour minimum Internet fee.
4. The 8 Euro ($12) fee each to get in to just walk around the arena in Verona.
5. The 5 Euro ($7.50) the auto pay machine kept at my first gas stop. (Think of our confusing machines here, with all the instructions in Italian.)
6. The 18 Euro ($27) per day insurance coverage for the car. Then again, if I didn't take it, we all know that there would have been a problem.
7. We think that 2's rain coat was in fact ripped-off in Verona.
8. The 35 Euro ($52) that the Turin bike shop charged for a used set of Shimano peddles for my bike. They treated me OK on the bike, but they got greedy on the peddles.
9. The buck-eighty for remote parking at ORD. If C-town gets the Olympics, watch out!
10.The two litre water bottle that 2 bought in between planes in Frankfurt, right before we had to go through security. Again.

That's it for today. I might have some other ideas for a final entry on the trip after a debrief with 2.

BCOT