The last leg

Friday, June 5th 2009
Day 17
Written en route to Philadelphia, USA at 8:45am (EST)

Yesterday (Thursday) we woke up tired but with a great view of the mountains and excited about our run. This was going to be the best, most memorable run of the trip, through the winding valley between rolling hills and glacier-carved mountains. We did not have a map and did not know where the best trails awaited us, so we spoke with two people at the hotel's front desk. Both agreed the road leading north out of town would provide beautiful views and even though it was a national road, traffic would be slow and it was of course suitable for running. We took their advice and headed north. Right away there was no side walk, and leading up a long gradual hill there was hardly even a shoulder. Being about 7am traffic was beginning to pick up, but it was slow if only due to the fact that the road was so narrow and winding. We kept assuring ourselves that we would find a quiet side street or at least a shoulder or sidewalk, but their was neither. In a beautiful area surely we were surrounded by endless trails and unmarked paths but here we were running along a highway, being passed by honking cars, John Deere tractors, mothers taking their children to their bilingual school, city buses, and trucks. Seven miles later I was back at the hostel and the most interesting thing we saw was a farm of Valdostan cows that produced the Fontina cheese we had bought from the guy in Turin. The rest of Seth's run sounded even more horrible than this first portion--he decided to head for a running path along the river, crossing through the busy, bustling town to get there only to spend his entire time on unshaded pavement alongside other runners who were brown and leathered from the sun. Needless to say, it was not the run we had fantasized about. After checking out of the hotel we checked out the visitor center for trail advice to find out what we missed out on. Though they gave us a walking guide, it seemed like the best trails were far from Aosta and the local walks were not much better than the path along the river. I guess we didn't miss much.

We woke up to this view from the hotel

Running along a national road

Seth and his John Deere tractor (Seth is actually hidden behind it)

A cute little school along the busy road

View on the way back down

Sun weary, we ate yogurt and cherries under the large Porto Praetoria (built by the Romans when they took the region from the Celtic-ligurians back in the first century), then wandered around the 2000-year-old Roman Theatre and 1000-year-old Gothic church, Chiesa di Saint'Orso. After a long relaxing lunch of a bit more bread, sauce and cheese in the Piazza Chanoux--indeed, we are always eating--we hoped to take the nearby cable car up one of the peaks but it was closed and wouldn't open until the summer. Instead we lolled around town and eventually found ourselves at the library for an hour or two to read (or in my case, sleep). One thing I finally got to try while we were here was one of the library's distributore autimatico (vending machines). I had spotted these around Italy and always wanted to try one, so for 25 cents I got to select from over two dozen hot chocolate and coffee beverages, served scalding hot in a small plastic cup with a tiny plastic stir-stick. I wish they had such extravagant drink machines in the US.

I guess this is what happens when Germans discover gelato (be glad I didn't get a closer picture)

Lunch under the Porto Praetoria

Roman Theatre

The bell tower of Chiesa di Saint'Orso

Serving 26 different hot drinks (I loved this machine)

Since we had been so good eating on the cheap for the duration of the trip we agreed to have a nice dinner to commemorate our last night in Italy. However, we had to eat early at 5:30pm in order to catch our 7:30 train to Milan. In Italy, only drinks are served in the afternoon and early evening and most restaurants don't even open until 7 or 7:30pm (as we found in Bologna), so it was impossible for us to eat at a nice place. We decided on an inexpensive take away pizza place down the road, and split a marinara pizza, a large calzone, and grabbed a chocolate and Nutella crepe to go. Even though it was not the lavish dinner we were hoping for, it was certainly Italian and satisfying, and even more importantly, it was fast--we absolutely would have missed our train had we gone to a restaurant. We still ended up walking briskly back to the hotel to grab our bags, then Seth took off for the train station to secure tickets while I bought a few last-minute items for the flight at the grocery store. After getting held up behind a slow check-out person, I frantically ran to the train station and hopped aboard, dripping with sweat--definitely not the best way to begin a 30-hour journey back home with no shower.

Our last real meal in Italy. How fancy.

The hotel

We said good bye to the Valle d'Aosta, watching the castles, glaciers and grassy hills pass by in the sunset, and split a 500ml tub of gelato I had 'somehow' managed to grab in my frenzy at the market. I had discovered the secret to how Italians can eat soooo much gelato and never gain weight, and that is that most of it seems to be made with skim milk. Our tub, even though it was 10 servings, only had 30 grams of fat (of which 15 grams were saturated). This means a normal person could easily eat an entire half liter tub a day if they are careful about their saturated fat intake. Sugar and calories, however, are another story. To top this off we had our crepe, oozing with nutella and chocolate. Throughout the course of the trip we would buy whole wheat bread (integrale) when possible, but 75% of the time we were spoiled by flaky white bread, white pasta, and white rice. In addition, we had been eating generous amounts of cheese and of course gelato. Even though milk and fresh fruit were plentiful, not having a kitchen to cook reduced our veggie consumption to canned tomatoes. Ironically I think we both lost some weight the past couple weeks, but we still decided early on to go on detox as soon as we return to Waltham.

Could one of these be the Matterhorn?

The train ride to Milan led to a 60min shuttle to Malpensa airport. We arrived around midnight and staked our claim in Terminal 1: a nice quiet patch of hard tile floor located at a corner so we would be covered at two sides. We slept on our travel towels with our hats covering our heads, which really wasn't a bad arrangement. Four and a half hours later Seth was up and running (literally), and by 10am we were flying out of Italy and over the Alps we had admired for the past 17 days.

As promised, pictures from the plane (unnervingly, the peaks seemed awfully close...)