Italy 2023, Aosta Valley

I knew we were on a European trip when they served a unique treat on the plane, and spoke the inflight messages in multiple languages. I always love that. We got a very classy black E series Mercedes for the next 3 weeks. It is a bigger car than Chuck usually drives. I hadn't slept much on the plane; Chuck watched several movies and didn't sleep at all, but we jumped into that car as if we were teenagers breaking loose, rather than the 60 plus people we really are.

Our first sites as we drove out of Milan were the foothills of the alps and I was already enamored. We planned to use Aosta as our jet lag stop. I made the mistake of booking a little family run motel on the wrong dates. So, we had to quickly adapt and stayed at the Omama hotel in town instead, which was one of only a few that had an opening for 3 days. Here was also the first car parking trick that carried through the trip. Many of the towns we visited have no car zones (ZTL) and we had to plan where to store/park the car or pay fees to the hotel to have a vehicle on site. Towns also had visitor taxes which are not included in the price of your stay. Many were around 3-4 euros per person per night. A note here about Dollars to Euros. When the dollar and Euro were trading at a 1:1 ratio last December, I went to the bank and got $1,000 transferred into euros. It was then easy to know how much I was paying for everything. While we were there the ratio was more like $1.18 for a Euro. Our credit cards worked and billed us at the current rate. We planned this expense into your trip. Omama was decorated in bright pink and had flamingo theme in our room. They also had a wonderful morning breakfast.

Aosta has the most incredible Roman ruins mingled seamlessly into their town. They speak both Italian and French here, and we were in the hotel with a few tourists but I don't think any of them were Americans. There was a group of Harley Davidson riders from Germany and a few families. We were very tired and it took about 3 days to get our internal clocks reset to the new time zone. It was the perfect place to walk, stretch, and breathe the crisp air. I loved this wood carving of accordian players in the town square.