“Grand Hotel Continental,” and finding their ’bus at the station we were soon conveyed to our destination.

The hotel was certainly of a high-class order, and very extensive.  The grand saloon for dining was most costly furnished.  Mirrors and paintings on the walls gave brilliancy and attractiveness to the scene.  The lecture room, the smoke room, the reading room, were all most luxuriantly fitted up.  The bed rooms also were sweet and clean.  Abundance of lavatories, bathrooms, lifts, etc., make the place a comfortable home from home.  After having fixed our number (I mean the number of our bed room, this was always our first business at a fresh hotel) we had breakfast, then a bath, for we had no opportunity of even a good wash since leaving Chambery twenty-four hours ago.  We were needing it badly.  An ample supply of hot water for the bath, towels ready to hand, soap we carried with us.  We thought it strange, but we found it true, the hotels don’t find soap.  This reminds me of Mark Twain’s position when in Italy, in his “Innocents Abroad.”  He says, “We have had a bath in Milan, in a public house.  They were going to put all three of us in one bath tub, but we objected.  We chose to have three tubs, and large ones—tubs suited to the dignity of aristocrats who had real estate, and brought it with them.  After we were stripped and had taken the first chilly dash, we discovered that haunting atrocity that has embittered our lives in so many cities and villages of Italy, there was no soap.  I called.  A woman answered and I barely had time to throw myself against the door, before she would have been in, in another second.  I said, ‘Beware, woman!  Go away from here—go away, now, or it will be worse for you.  I am an unprotected male, but I will preserve my honour at the peril of my life.’”  We had a good bath, then to bed for a few hours, as we had had hardly any sleep in the train.  We rose about 2.30 p.m. refreshed, and after lunch we prepared for a stroll or ride to see the sights of this wonderful city.  We soon found it is a wonderful city.  The ancient and the modern are seen at almost every point.  And yet you seem to feel there is no jar on your taste or feeling.