Again I had not done the proper research! We needed to go over a fairly high pass! 2350 meters high to be precise!! Just above the ski resort Isola 2000!
En route we ran into a vintage car rally....... all going to the top of the pass!
When we reached the top and crossed into Italy, we found out that our built-in trusty GPS system on our French Peugeot only covered France!! And we didn't even consider that possibility beforehand! So we suddenly got a blank screen right on the frontier! Panic set in!!!
At the beginning it was not a problem.
Nowhere else to go but down!
We obviously did not have any maps in the car, as we have given up on those years ago and our other SatNav (TomTom) systems include most of Europe! Lunch in Cuneo was possible only because we fortunately had a Michelin restaurant guide with us which had a map of the city. The Osteria della Chiocciola was very interesting and definitely worth a visit.
Our next stop was the Hotel Dogana Vecchia in Turin. This was an old hotel ( with somewhat tired rooms!) and it's claim to fame was that Mozart had stayed there!
Interesting to try to find it, in a very confusing city without any guidance system!! And the hotel was in a pedestrian area! We managed to get just a few blocks from the hotel (by using the hotel's directions) but as we couldn't turn R where we were supposed to, it then took another hour to get back to the hotel (chosen because it had parking!!), and we had to be directed to it by the police! Lots of one way streets didn't help!
However because it was in the pedestrian centre it was great for seeing the rest of Turin!
We had an evening dinner at the restaurant Vintage 1997....... which was great!
Next morning we moved on to lunch at Lake Orta, and no,we weren't following the car rally!!
And spent the next night with a view over Lake Maggiore from our room in the Hotel Ancora! We would definitely recommend staying there and choosing a room with a view!!
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