But on the plus side, the pesto was good...

Posted by Alex | | Posted On Monday 18 October 2010 at 20:18

I realise I am a little behind on my promised postings. I blame the horrid cold I seem to have come down with. That said, I did manage to go to the farmacia today and get charged over the odds for 12 tablets - I guess that's what you get when you walk in, sans prescription (as every Italian in there was clutching several wads of paper), and ask "Scusi, ha qualcosa per un rafreddore?" It turns out that something was €7 worth of Sudofed. Still, it seems to be working wonders. I can breathe, and haven't coughed my lungs up in five hours!

Back to the business at hand though:

Saturday, we all ventured to Turin. It's not exactly the closest place to visit in the north of Italy. On a map, as the crow flies, I guess it would be pretty close. By train though, it's anywhere between 150 and 190 kilometres, depending on the route. That comes to around 3 hours of trains and stations. Still, in spite of getting up at 6am, and arriving in overcast Turin at 12pm, it was nice to see parts of Italy I'd never seen before, like the rolling hills of Asti (the area where they make the sparkling wine).

Needless to say, we seven Pavesi Erasmus arrived sans map. The onus was then on me to direct people, though upon finding the centre we then took an hour to decide where to go for food, and a further hour to find our friends from Chambery and decide where we'd go from there. In the end, guiding 14 people with different ideas on what to do became too much stress - so we split into two groups. I went off with two people, and saw the sights; I have no idea what the others did.

In essence, though, Turin really doesn't warrant a blog post. It isn't exactly a fascinating city. Maybe it was because of the cloud, and the rain, and the fact I didn't get to visit the Superga to be awestruck by the majesty of the Alps looming in the middle-distance. Maybe it's just because it's far too French. I blame the Savoy royalty for that; bloody Francophilic fools.

Interesting fact: Piedmontese politicians, until 1861, preferred to speak in French rather than their own Italian dialect! Bastards.


Moving swiftly on. So interested and enthralled was I by the Mole Antoniella, one of the few things worth seeing in Turin - and more so than the shroud - that I managed to miss my train back, and had to pay extra to get another one. Needless to say, I arrived home tired, damp, and feeling unfulfilled. In short: it was a nice day out, but I wouldn't recommend Turin to you in the slightest. Go to Milan instead. To bring this rather sad blog to a close, here's a nice picture:

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