Alpine valley

Thursday, June 4th 2009
Day 16
Written en route to Milan, Italy at 10:00pm

The train ride (yesterday, Wednesday) once again was a nice experience. Like the other rides, there was lots of room to move about and walk around, and of course the scenery was spectacular--steep snow capped mountains shot up from the perfectly flat valley and eventually castles and fortresses began to speckle the cliffs. In Turin we could just barely discern the peaks in the distance, though we saw one that looked particularly foreboding, shaped like a large hooked tooth. We joked that it must be the Matterhorn, like from the Disney Land ride. I later read that the Matterhorn actually does overlook the Valle d'Aosta, so during the commute we guessed at which peak it could be (we continued to guess our entire time in the valley but could never find confirmation).

A train station near Aosta (that's not an Italian name on that station sign).

See those funky old buildings and the vineyards on the hills?

When we arrived in Aosta (pop. 34,000) it was quickly apparent that we were somewhere totally different. Nestled in the Italian Alps near the border of both France and Switzerland, Aosta has a culture of its own. For example, school children are required to be fluent in both Italian and French. Many signs are written in both languages and sometimes in Swiss German, too (English was rarely included, another indication we were off the beaten track). The buildings became less bright and colourful and more brown and Gothic.

We arrived around 6:45pm, just in time to miss the tourist information office, so we just checked in to the Hotel Mignon in the north of town. We didn't find any hostels nearby, so staying in a budget hotel was a real treat for us--we enjoyed our own room, bathroom, balcony with a view of the mountains, mini fridge to store our cheese and chill our boxed milk, towels, and soap! It was the best two star hotel you could ask for. Too bad we couldn't stay longer.

We had our bread/sauce/fontina cheese dinner out in one of the quiet piazzas in the center of town then walked around for a while, taking in the spectacular view and the appealing, aging streets. We noticed right away that the town has a much bigger proportion of anguished 'punk' kids than the other cities we had visited. Perhaps there isn't enough in town for youth to do except to stare at mountains and wear black? Many of the locals, too, seemed to be a bit more on edge, verging on icy and standoff-ish, though clearly this was not always the case as there were quite a few friendly people as well. Also, the population is not nearly as well dressed--in fact, there were large numbers of dumpy-looking people. Until then Italians had really impressed me by the way they dress; tourists could usually be picked out right away by their inferior fashion and I felt like I screamed 'foreigner' with my rather basic apparel. In Aosta, however, I felt a bit less obvious. We finished off the day with a walk around an ancient Roman arch (Archo di Augusto), watched the gushing glacial water of the River Buthier, and shared a couple cones of gelato, due gusti.