JeanneB

It sounds to me like the hotel misunderstood and thought you were coming from Mendrissio. I get the impression you approached the tourist info person (perhaps in a panic) with all the disparate info you'd gathered from strangers, including the Medrissio bit. Now you know it would have been better to have simply left it with the caller to say: she is HERE and she wants to get THERE.

Let yours be a valuable lesson to others who read this in the future. It's not enough to simply write down the address of your hotel. Before the trip, you should at least know it's location in relation to the station or main landmarks. And you should know the best options for getting there.

I've had days like this when abroad; most of us have. You get confused, frustrated, almost panicked. That's when it's time to relax, have a cup of coffee, regroup and remember the old axiom: keep it simple. I usually end up laughing about it, a funny tale about the "bump in the road" and how dumb we were.