Goodbye Cote D Azur Hello Italian Alps

Good afternoon everyone, After spending 2 hours trying to get this blog post to go through, I find that it all went poof when I published it. A brief synopsis of our journey from Nice to Milan central station and from Milan by car to Val D'Aoste in the Italian alps. Got up early in Nice to take the train to Milan central train station. We really enjoyed Nice quite a lot and were sorry to leave. Got on the train at a little before 7:00 am for the journey to Ventimiglia, the first town in Italy where we changed trains for our journey to Milan central train station through Genoa. Arrived in Milan and looked for our National car rental office located in the staton, sounds simple enough, right? For those of you that haven't been through the Milan central train station it is a massive building constructed in 1931 to handle the huge amount of passenger traffic through Italy. Each day 330,000 passengers go through the station and There are 4 levels to the station so finding this little car rental booth was no easy feat. Of course they had a map of the statn but the rental booth has been relocated since the map was put up. I left Terri with the luggage and scoured the station for this booth. After talking to several people in my terrible Italian, I located it, went back and got Terri and went down to pick up my internet reserved car. After 45 minutes of working with, waiting, and waiting some more, we finally got our papers to pick up the car,,,,,,,where is the car,,,,,just go outside, turn right and you can't miss it. Went outside, turned right and spent the next 20 minutes looking for the rental pickup area.......oh wait, there is a parking sign and in little tiny letters it says Rimaggiore / national car rental.....finally. Picked up our stylishly compact Fiat 500 and we are on our way.....kind of. Took us 30 minutes to get to the Autostrade for the trip to Courmayeur in the Italian Alps. To add to our stress level, the Fiat has this nifty little feature that turns off your motor every time that you stop and let out the clutch. I kept thinking this piece of crap keeps stalling out at every intersection..no they built it that way. We finally get to the Autostrade and we are on our way out of the city. You pick up a ticket at a dispenser much like a parking structure when you enter the highway. As the city buildings slowly faded away, we we now in the countryside. After we got to the city of Aoste things really got interesting. Every little ancient town we passed has it's very own castle guarding the town. Simply amazing wondering how they built they beautiful structures with no power tools. Now the toll road ends and we must pay for our ride on the road,,,,28 euros, and I had 1 and 2 euro coins for the toll, I don't think so! We arrived in Courmayeur and even Terri had to give our "bitch" Gamin Nuvu 350 kudos for helping us find our way. We now appreciate the US for the conciseness in their freeway signs. We are at the Hotel Cresta A Duc in Courmayeur. I lucked out again, choosing this hotel because it has excellent accomodations, king sized beds, and is 100 yards to the tramway up to Courmayeur ski resort. Nice little village with lots of shops and restaurants, and of course, Gelaterias. Got up this morning and went up to ski, rented all the equipment on the mountain and, they have a discount from the hotel and a discount for women (sounds like descrimination to me). Rent equipment and purchased lift tickets for less than 100 Euros. The snow is not the greatest but for gods sake we are skiing the Italian Alps, what'sm not to like. We wound up skiing all day and it was quite nice. We took the tram up to the very top and skied down from the top, very nice. We are back in the hotel and planning tomorrows adventure, either a d at trip to Chamonix, France to see the village and ski resort or visit the hot springs at St. dicier in La Palud up the road.. The following day we head back into the insanity called Milan, to return the rental car and catch the train to Venice. Good night all and thanks for allowing us to share our adventure with you. ciao