Our travels have brought us to Torino, our final destination (well, stay at least) here in Italy. We left Milan earlier today after a reasonable stay, relaxing and seeing what they had to offer. It’s not much, let me tell you. Milan is a big city with a lot to offer, but again a lot of things are closed because of vacationing, which I believe they call ‘ferie’ here in Italy. Basically, everyone in Italy up and leaves to go to the coast, places like Nice and Cannes, while the rest of us travelers are stuck trying to find places like restaurants that would normally be close, but are now much further away because of the holiday.
A few observations about Milan that I didn’t have the chance to add before: there’s really not much going on in a city you hear so much about. I mean, Milan is supposed to be the fashion capital of the world, right? You would think it would be a more exciting place. Another complaint: the church where the last supper is. Sold out for 2 weeks? They only let 25 people into the church every 15 minutes. I’m all for crowd control, but when 2 travelers can’t come and see one of the world’s most famous paintings for two weeks because they are worried about crowd control, there is a problem.
Enough about Milan though, let’s move on to Torino.
We have been here in Torino for a couple of hours now and we already have good vibes. Our hostel was easy to find and the people here are very nice. We asked about restaurants since everything around here is closed, and the guy at the desk called a few to see if they were open before sending us on our way. How nice is that? Good vibes from Torino are also coming our way because it’s RAINING here! Yes, raining! After dealing with hot, hot, and more hot, rain is the perfect kind of weather for us right now. I’m finally able to put on these things called jeans, which I haven’t been able to wear all trip, and they feel great.
As far as Turin vs. Torino, I think the Italian pronunciation of it is Torino but we Americans can’t pronounce words like that, so we call it Turin. I think Torino sounds much better, personally, but so does Firenze (Florence), Sicilia (Sicily) and Venezia (Venice).
One thing that we are missing right now in Torino is American coverage of the Olympics. We get the Olympics on the TV here, but it’s all in Italian, which obviously we don’t understand, and all of the athletes featured are the Italian athletes. A lot of fencing, judo, volleyball, even ping pong. No gymnastics, basketball, or swimming (mostly for Michael Phelps).
We were able to catch coverage of the 10000m I believe for track, which doesn’t sound like it would be that interesting but both Thomas and I were amazed by it. Over 20 girls running for 30 minutes faster than the speed of light around a track for something like 25 times. Nuts. I could never do it.
I think our plan for tomorrow is to look around and check out the downtown square, hopefully see some of the stuff from the Olympics in 2006, and try to figure out a way to get to the Juventus stadium for Thomas to take pictures. Oh, and find a restaurant to eat at since nothing is open around here!
Still working on getting pictures up. I’ll keep everyone posted!
Ciao
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