torino

9/4-12/4

It’s finally the weekend when I get to go to torino and visit my usac friends from last semester! I’ve been planning this one since before they even moved there, and more realistically set this date of Easter weekend when Tracey came to visit all the way back in February. Since it was a long weekend, I had lots of time there which was great! The trip started out Thursday evening with a (slow but beautiful) train ride through the Alps! This was on of the prettiest train rides I have ever been on, which made it really hard to concentrate on the homework I brought along. The train goes along the French/Italian border for a couple of hours before finally crossing over into Italy and then heading over to torino. Some of the stops that I wrote down as being the most beautiful (and that I really want to go back and visit) are tende, limone, cuneo and fossano. After the train ride, I arrived in the torino porta nuova station and was greeted by Tracey, who I knew would be there, and Sarah, which was a nice surprise! Emily was off in Paris that weekend (of course she goes to France when I go to Italy)! We got on a bus and went back to Tracey’s nice apartment where her roommate cooked us an awesome dinner. Then we went to this awesome little pastry place, nicknamed “illegals” by Tracey since it is in a back alley behind an unmarked door.. but once you go inside it just full of amazing pastries! After that it was time to say goodbye to sarah already since she was heading down to viterbo in the morning (so jealous!).

The next day we got up and did lots of touristy things in torino (there’s so much to do)! We walked around the coolest piazzas, went up in the mole antonelliana and spent some time in the cinema museum, which was really cool because some rooms were movie sets that you got to walk through and be a part of. There were also lounge chairs where we got to sit and listen to the speakers in the headrests while watching a movie on a big screen; really a cool museum. Why didn’t we ever take a field trip for Italian cinema last semester? After that we went and got a torino specialty, bicerin. It’s like hot chocolate, but better! I think there is coffee in it too; it is very good whatever it is. We drank it in this really old café that has been making bicerin forever. So cool! Then we walked around and saw the roman wall (of course the Romans were there too) and the duomo with the shroud, which is (apparently) very famous (Shroud of Turin ring a bell for anyone?). We continued our tour with a stop in the Egyptian museum, which was interesting, but also kind of weird that there was an entire museum of Egyptian artifacts in torino. After that we went to big piazza right on the river po and had aperativo, a great little Italian tradition where you usually drink this (nasty) drink which is called an aperativo (though we didn’t do that part) and eat from this big buffet that the bar lays out. After taking our time and eating a lot (so Italian of us) we headed to an Irish pub called waxys and spent a couple hours there before taking a bus part of the way home (it just stopped and said that it was done) and then trudging through the rain huddled under one umbrella for the rest.

The next day we got up and went to a huge market! I have never been to a town in Europe that does not have a market and I have really come to enjoy them, even though there are some things that I would still never buy there (underwear and electronics are the first two things that pop into my head). That’s something that I will definitely miss about Europe! We got some more pastries and donuts from the market and then after eating too much decided to go into one of the palaces downtown. We decided to go into the palazzo madama, which was really cool. After that, me and Tracey went back to her place and then walked around the mall near her called lingotto, which is in the old fiat factory. We also checked out this place called eataly, which is like whole foods only bigger and better! Unfortunately it’s expensive so we only looked and did some actual grocery shopping at another place down the street where we got ingredients to make French toast for Easter brunch the next day (amazing idea)! After our sight seeing filled day we went to a restaurant near by and got some good pizza (you just can’t get it as good or as cheap anywhere else but italy!). Then we met up with some of Tracey’s friends and got this other amazing hot drink called hafa café at a place called hafa café. I don’t even know how to describe it; it had something like cinnamon and chocolate in it, it was just so good. When we had all finished our hafa cafes we went to the train station to meet up with ken, another viterbo usacer who decided to come to torino this weekend as well! Even after hearing his horrendous trenitalia horror story, and how he had basically been up for the past two days, he still decided to join us at the bar we were going to called shamrocks. Luckily Tracey wanted to dance, so we picked out a place accordingly and even though almost no one else wanted to join, ken did, which was fun! I had an amazing drink there too, called a Cinderella, which was strawberry vodka and lemon soda. The only bad thing was that people were allowed to smoke in the bar there, so I smelled like an ash tray afterwards. We also stopped at another Irish pub down the street called Murphy’s (there are a lot in torino I guess) where Tracey was friends with the bar tender and I got some other fruity drink that was also good. That was a really fun night, and when we got home it was super late. The next day, however, we didn’t have to be anywhere until like 12, so we got to sleep in. then we went to the train station to meet yet another friend and then we all headed back to Tracey’s where she and her roommate prepared an amazing French toast brunch (well it was really like 2 pm) and we watched the end of the classic 90s movie Kazaam (yes the one with shaq) dubbed in Italian. Somehow the day (and the weekend) just flew by and it was already time for my train back to nice! :( It was the same beautiful ride, and this time, even though I had a connection, both the trains I took were the nicest trenitalia trains I have ever been on (and using the adjectives nice and trenitalia in one sentence is already saying a lot). It was such a fun and relaxing weekend, and a great chance to catch up with some old friends one last time before we all go our separate ways! oh and torino is a really cool city. Definitely different than viterbo; more northern italian (obviously), like milan but better :)