Tuesday 7th June: Overcast/sunny and warm in Turin, 18°C to 30°
Turin City Walk: 15k playing tourist around Turin
Statu of Grimaldi
Not many tourists in Turin
Time to smell the roses
Hanging by teh skin of a rope
Local markets sell bullocks hearts
Superga church on hill - note - no Muslim woman in photo!!
Shroud of Turin inside the Church of John the Baptist
A warm day wandering around teh streets of Turin, a beautiful city and home to the Juventus soccer team. Many old buildings, but also much greenery. Some tourists, but not crowded. Busy streets, but many care free Piazza's. With the River Po winding through the city. A rather nasty incident with a muslim woman was not enough to spoil our day.
We're both awake at 4am. It's pitch black and after 2 cups of tea, a cup of coffee and breakfast, its 8.30 when we stroll down to the River Po to walk around the path and back to the Station Porta Nuova where there's a Tourist Office. It's a leisurely 40 minutes walk before we find it, and walk out with a bunch of maps and directions to a few places. Our first destination is to the trekking and hiking shop Montura, at the bottom end of Via Giovanni Battista Viotti where we've been told by the European Distributor of Jet Boil that we should be able to buy some isobutane gas cans, not the usual gas can style in Europe. He was right, and we buy 2 x 100ml gas cans. Its a very pleasant 20°C as we wander off.
There's only a handful of tourists roaming Turin, mostly home grown Italians. We wander almost alone, through the streets dotted with statues of Giribaldi and Emanuele, and the Piazzas of Castello and San Carlo, adorned with tables set up by cafe owners much earlier. We stop for a cappuccino at the most un-italian cafe called Busters. The Egyptian Museum is top of Trip Advisor's list of things to do, but interesting as it is to some people, we were more interested to take in teh sights just walking along the River Dora to where it joined teh River Po. There was a small park with markets teaming with locals, and next to it was a Carrefours Express where we stopped to buy veggies and a packet of Carnaroli rice to make a risotto tonight.
Back along the river track, Ian stopped stopped to take a photo of the Basilica di Superga, a church perched high on the hill behind Turin. The church has a chequered history, holding many tombs of the Kings of the House of Savoy and also being the site of a plane crash in 1949 that claimed the lives of 31 people, including the entire Torino football team. While taking a photo, it was here that we had a nasty encounter with a Muslim woman, head wrapped in a scarf, who came running across the bridge from where she had been selling fairy floss and windmills to drivers in passing cars. At first we thought she was trying to sell us her junk, but when she became hysterical and grabbed at Ian's camera, I recalled a similar story told by Susie, my sister-in-law, about how Muslim woman don't like having their photos taken, and I quickly warned Ian to hold on to his camera.
He showed her the one photo he had taken, which didn't include her, just the church, but she frantically insisted seeing all the photos and grabbed the camera to see what others he had. In a bit of a shoving scuffle, Ian pulled back the camera, as she looked like she was going to chuck it into the river. We briskly walked away holding the camera tightly, while she made some hurried phone calls - brother? husband? police? Isis? We weren't going to hang around to find out. We can all make our own judgements on her religious zest!
At 1.30pm we're back in our little apartment having bread, cheese and tomatoes, washed down with a red wine and a few beers to settle the nerves. Ian was a bit rattled. It's not his style to be confrontational. Tomorrow we want to walk the 16k return trip up to the Superga but we'll be looking for a different bridge to cross on the way up to avoid another close encounter of the third kind. A restful afternoon listening to a rainy thunderstorm outside whilst sorting photos and reading up on more things to do in Turin.
Turin is well known as the home of the Shroud of Turin, the football teams Juventus F.C. and Torino F.C., the headquarters of automobile manufacturers FIAT, Lancia and Alfa Romeo, and as host of the 2006 Winter Olympics. Turin was Italy's first capital city in 1861 and was home to the House of Savoy, Italy's royal family.
It's 5pm and a short walk before dinner takes us to the Church where the Shroud of Turin is kept. Again, we are tourists in the minority amidst a sea of locals just finishing work and socialising in the cafes and bars. The Cathedral of Turin is quite spectacular, and inside there's just one other person besides us peering into the glass cased smaller chapel housing the Shroud of Turin. A leisurely walk back via La Mole, where Donna and Milton are staying tomorrow night. Donna's been keeping me up to date on their exploits on non-existent buses and strike-bound trains today, as they try to get to Briancon. Their last ETA was midnight!!
Dinner is mushroom risotto with Carnaroli rice, with an Italian side salad, with a Barbera d'Asti red wine and Menabrea beer. Time for a quick blog and recap of the day before a Cointreau and bed.