Buona liberazione, Italia

Sorry (again) for the long absence.  Italy didn’t really change all that much after my last post, and to be honest, I was quite frustrated by a lot of what we experienced that I didn’t feel it was all that necessary to tell you about it.  Let me just sum things up by saying that all we were really told to do was prune the olive grove.  It seemed like everyone else had at least some say in what they were doing, or given the opportunity to relay their strong points, skills and experience.  Not us.  Compound this with the fact that our host made several attempts at avoiding to talk to us directly (IE: sending someone else to tell us something just minutes after she was in the same room with us), we frequently overheard her refer to us as “the Americans” in an unpleasant tone (despite the fact that she very well knew our names), and a few other things; we didn’t feel very welcome, and we were very much looking forward to leaving.

Too bad leaving required the Italian train system, which failed to work smoothly, again.

Getting from Rapolano to Siena and then to Florence was cake.  It went smoothly, we got on our first train for free, and they were roughly on time.  We felt we were off to a good start.  That is, until we got to Florence and the 8:30 train we were hoping to catch from Florence to Venice was sold out.  All classes.  Thankfully the automated ticket thing was wrong when it said that all trains were sold out, and we were able to buy tickets for the 11:30 high-speed to Venice.  Now, all of you are going to cringe when you find out what we did during our time in Florence, but we spent it in the most comfortable chairs we could find, trading off naps.  It just happened to be in a McDonalds.  The Florence train station didn’t have any lockers, so even if we happened to have had the energy to walk around and explore, we would have had to do so with all our bags with us.  Thankfully the McCafe had some delicious fresh squeezed blood orange juice, and the time passed relatively quickly.

The train from Florence to Venice was relatively comfortable, but packed.  Since I was the one who napped the least, I had a very hard time staying awake on the train, but Jon managed to pass out.  Fortunately for us, I managed to only doze; otherwise we would have missed our stop.  We got off the train, were assaulted by the Venetian heat, and set off for the ticket booth to buy our ticket to Vienna, Austria.

Well, let me preface this by saying that we weren’t in the lovely, ancient, sightseeing-worthy area of Venice.  We were at Venice Mestre, which is on the mainland, probably 15-20 kilometers away from any sort of canal.  Well, after asking for the next train to Vienna, we received two tickets for the 9:18 train that evening… over 8 hours away.

8 hours, in not-so-lovely “new” Venice.  Seriously?  After finding this out, we set out to see exactly what we had to work with, and found that the most Italian thing there was several Chinese restaurants and (as always) a halal place serving really lousy pizza.  Thankfully for us though, there was a lovely restaurant in the hotel across the street from the train station that offered free WIFI use with the purchase of a beverage.  We sat there for the majority of our 8 hour layover, and then moved to the hotel lobby when the place was closing to get ready for dinner.  I was grateful they didn’t kick us out.  While sitting there I managed to overhear the front desk clerk tell someone that the trains will be going on strike that evening at 9PM.  They seriously couldn’t wait until after our train left?  So, when we returned to the train station to wait out the last hour before our train, we were a little worried, but hopeful, that maybe we overheard him incorrectly, and were wondering exactly what an “Italian train strike” might be.

Well, after a ten minute wait at our platform, we saw another train for another destination pull in.  We saw this as a good sign, since a strike would surely mean all trains, not just the ones going to Vienna.  After about half an hour, our train finally arrived, we found our cabin, got comfortable, watched a movie, and passed out.  We couldn’t afford to pay for a sleeper cabin, but we were fortunate to not have anyone else in our cabin the entire duration of the journey… all 11 hours of it.  So far, Austrian trains are my favorite.  They’re comfortable, have places to plug in things that need charging, and their bathrooms are pretty clean.  All and all, not a bad train experience.  I woke up at about 7:30AM to the beautiful sights of the Austrian countryside.  I never had a mental picture of what Austria might look like before, so I was pleased to see how beautiful it was.

We arrived at the train station perfectly fine, got off the train and set off for the ticket counter.  The man at the desk spoke pretty broken English, but we managed to get two tickets from Vienna to Prague no problem.  We then stopped at a place in the station (just as comfortable, clean and convenient as their trains) to have some Wiener schnitzel and apple strudel and sat down to eat it and relax.  About half way through our schnitzel, as Jon was reading the train schedule, he realized that the train to Prague isn’t leaving from this station, and there isn’t a train to get from the station we were in to the station we needed to be in.  All this realization with only 30 minutes until our train leaves.  Well, some more reading led us to find that they have a metro system, and once we figured out where we needed to go, we got there with about 10 minutes to spare.  Same sort of train that we took to get to Vienna, only this time we didn’t have a cabin seat assignment.  We didn’t see any other sort of seats, so we just picked one and sat down.  Lucky for us, the 5 hour trip into Prague was made much shorter and more enjoyable by two brothers from New Zealand sitting in the cabin with us.  They told us that unless the train people kick us out of our seats to find new ones, we were welcome to stay with them.  We talked the whole way about a number of things, and only at the very end, as we were loading up our bags to get off the train, did we finally actually exchange names.  Funny how those sorts of things happen.

Getting from Prague to our host was fairly easy.  Czech is nothing like anything we’ve read before, so there was no guessing as to what the signs said.  Also, when the last train we took would make its stops, it would do so well before we could read the sign of our destination.  This was a little nerve wracking, since we didn’t really feel like getting off at the wrong stop or missing ours, but we managed okay.  After finding a payphone and calling our host, one of them was there within about 15 minutes or so to pick us up.  Finally.  Only about… 12 hours later than we had originally planned, but I guess it all worked out okay in the end.

Currently, I am sitting in a very comfortable bed in a hotel in Prague.  We’ve stopped here for the evening just after our two week farm stay, and head off to Germany tomorrow.  After all our sightseeing today/tonight, I’ll post again with an update on the time we spent in the Czech Republic.  Let me give you a little preface: great food, great company and real forests.  

Ulivi, yoga, sorgenti termali, pizza e la conversazione. Tutto bene in Italia.

Alright, now that I’ve properly vented about the atrocities of the Italian train system, I can tell you all about the lovely host we’re staying with.  The property is gigantic, she has a very successful veggie garden, a few (and by that I mean about 40) olive trees, and several houses.  It apparently used to be habited by monks many a year ago.  The host herself is a very wonderful, well versed and very well-traveled woman, I would guess in her 60s or 70s.  She has two sons that I am aware of, one who I will meet this weekend when he comes up from Naples (he spends his weekends here, but works there), and the other has been here with his wife and some others for a yoga seminar.  There are also four other HelpXers here, so it’s been considerably more social than our last host.  Not that her conversation was wonderful, but you have so many people to talk to here.

Our first day of work, we started with pruning olive trees.  If you know anything about olive trees, please don’t comment to tell me that I chose the wrong time to do this, because we know.  Basically, some of the trees (mainly the ones around the edges) have been a bit neglected for a year or two, and desperately need pruning.  Unfortunately, they’ve already started flowering, and once they start doing that, you can’t prune them any longer, for risk of preventing fruit (olives).  Well, it’s of a double edged sword though, because if we don’t prune them, they don’t fruit, but if we do prune them, the trees will go into shock and definitely won’t fruit.  I guess they’ve accepted the fact that they won’t be expecting many olives this season, and would rather prune them anyways rather than having loads of work next year.  I don’t blame them, but I must admit it’s quite grueling work.  Given the nature of the olive tree, the best branches make sort of an umbrella, so if you need to get to the base of the tree to cut out all the extra branches that are sprouting from the roots, you have a lot of bending over to do.

Last night they had an inauguration for a mosaic piece done for their big marble terrace, all a bunch of yoga business that I didn’t quite understand, but regardless it was beautifully done and made for a very enjoyable evening.  There were about forty or so people there, we met a nice soon to be med-school student from Ohio working at a B&B in a castle here in Rapolano, and enjoyed some songs by two of the people in the yoga seminars.  Wonderful voices, it was very lovely.

Yesterday started a bit more slowly, but with olive pruning again.  After that though, it very much turned into a lazy relaxing day for everyone.  The yoga seminar people and some helpers who wished to join did some meditation, another helper enjoyed a massage she won for figuring out the number of triangles and petals in the mosaic, and I just enjoyed the quiet.  Afterwards, a combination of us went to a natural hot spring, which was stinky with sulfur but very enjoyable, and then out for pizza.  It was really a very pleasant evening and I really needed it.  The day started with a bit of difficulty for me; I was tired for some reason, despite what I thought was enough sleep, and I wasn’t that enthusiastic about the work.  To be honest, I think I was feeling a bit homesick.  Enjoying some swimming, some pizza and some wonderful conversation really put me back into the swing of things, and I think I’ll be better for it today.  Unfortunately the yoga seminar people invited us to join in their yoga class this morning, but when my alarm went off I stretched out to release some tension in my back, and fell right back to sleep and missed it.  I’m a bit bummed, but alas, its not like I can’t do yoga by myself.

Also, a little side note: there are a lot of accents here at the moment, but a plentiful one is English.  I’ve begun thinking with a British accent.  Seems a bit silly, but I did start dreaming in French while we were in Nice, so I guess it’s not all that unheard of.  I hope I come home with a cool accent!

Treni italiani sono terribili.

Alright, now to update you on getting to Italy.  First, the one sentence summary.  Then I’ll explain.

In order to get from Spain to our host in Italy we took: one bus, two subways, one plane, two trains, sleeping in a train station, another train, sleeping outside a train station, and a car ride.

The Italian train system frustrated me before, when we visited Torino, but I never thought that I could feel so frustrated that all I could think about was going home.

The day started early, with a 7:20 AM bus from our host’s village to Madrid.  We were exhausted from being up late packing, and spent most of the trip dozing off.  When we arrived to the bus station we took two subways to get to the airport, had to pay an extra fine even though we had a boarding pass (oh well, just a euro), and proceeded to figure out the RyanAir process.  Which by the way, I’ll be taking RyanAir out of my Travel Resources page, because it is not as wonderful as we thought.  Went through checking our bags, the visa check, and proceeded to our gate, still with two hours to spare.  Not a big deal, but with recent events we thought security would be heightened, so we had the mindset of “better more time than no time.”  We got on our plane, got lucky with two bulkhead seats, and was annoyed by RyanAir flight attendants constantly trying to sell the passengers food, perfume, lottery tickets, those scam “energy bracelets” and all sorts of things.  So much for napping.

When we arrived in Pisa, we bought a train ticket from the airport to Florence, with the plan of getting off at Empoli.  We forgot to validate our ticket, so we almost got busted and fined for not doing so, but the train guy decided to show some mercy and validated it for us for 5 euros.  Not a wonderful start.  It was also then that we found out that the train wouldn’t be stopping anywhere, it just goes straight to Florence.  Okay… Not the end of the world, we’ll just take a train from Florence to Siena.

Unfortunately, all the trains from Florence to Siena were cancelled due to an electrical problem on the route.  So Jon stood in line for over an hour to ask some one for advice on how to get to our final destination, and after them assuring us that the train to Chiusi would get there in time to get on a train to Siena (and then get off on the stop for our host), we ran to the platform and hopped on the train.

Well, in order for us to make it to Chiusi in time for us to train towards Siena, the Italian train system would have to actually run on schedule.  We got there, only to find that we were in a nothing town, and had just missed the last train by 5 minutes.  We called our host, and after finding out that she wouldn’t be able to pick us up from the first train back home, we had to wait until 9:30ish the next morning until we could have some place comfortable to sleep.  After spending nine hours in the Chiusi train station, failing to get any sleep and freezing our butts off, we decided to hop on the first train anyway, with hopes of the station in Rapolano having a better place to sit.

Wrong again.  The station was tiny, but worse, the building was closed.  Now we had about four and a half hours, most of which we spent freezing, to wait outside until our host could pick us up.  I felt like I was going to be cold for the rest of my life.

I will, never ever ever again, use the Italian train system, unless I can start at the crack of dawn and hopefully avoid the chance of getting stuck some place after missing the last train.  I had a very poor first impression of Italy; its people, its transportation and its organization.  All that being said though, our host is wonderful, there are tons of people here, and we’ve had a good time since we arrived.  I’ll fill you in on that bit later though.

Vous allez faire quoi pendant vos vacances?

Alright, enough about my Italian adventures.  I hope you enjoyed something a little out of our normal routine!

Since we got back from Torino, we got straight to seriously working on booking all of our farms for the second half of our trip.  We had been trying for weeks to just focus on Spain, but that was proving to be extremely difficult to plan.  While planning our first destination is obviously important, I felt it was equally as important to start looking in the other countries before they all book up too.  So I took over the emailing and started with the smallest countries with the fewest farms.  We had to change our plans slightly; originally we planned to see Switzerland, but after emailing all 3 possible farms, we decided to start looking at other countries too.  For the Switzerland slot I also emailed farms in Belgium (all 4 of them) and then several in Germany.  I also emailed all the possible farms in the Czech Republic and the Netherlands (3 and 5 respectively), and simply crossed my fingers that one of them would respond positively.  I had the support of my two friends at home, Jenna and Cristina, along the way, each of them insisting I keep my chin up, thoughts positive, and emails will come.  Believing them, I asked for good vibes, and went to bed feeling optimistic, several emails later.

The next morning we woke up to no replies, but given that we leave for class a little before nine o’clock, I decided this shouldn’t worry me.  When we got home from class though at one, we had 3 emails in our inbox.  One positive, two negative.  I was excited, we had officially booked our dates for the Netherlands!  Thankfully, this farm is only an hour away from Amsterdam, and the family has lived in the city for the majority of their lives.  Nothing like insider information on what to do and see!  That night, along side my homework, I continued to send emails to farms in Germany, and then started looking into Italy and Ireland.  After a long chat with my mom about my planning for the summer, planning for the fall semester, and getting updated on things at home, I went to bed feeling the same as I did the night before; optimistic.

The following morning went exactly the same as the previous.  Nothing when our alarm went off, but we had a positive reply from Germany (a farm between Berlin and Hamburg) waiting in our inbox when we got out of class!  Two farms officially confirmed, we were a third there.  Given that we hadn’t heard anything from the Czech Republic, and how badly Jon wanted to return, I insisted he call the farm there that looked the most promising, one just a little over an hour outside of Prague.  After buying the minimum amount of Skype credits allowed, and waiting 15 minutes for them to apply to his account, he nervously called the farm, fingers crossed that they spoke English well.  It was a quick conversation, but all positive.  She would send us an email confirming the dates, and we were booked.  All in a span of less than three full days, we had half of our farms booked.  Now thats what I call progress.

The next day we were able to confirm a farm just outside of Madrid in Spain, and today we finally confirmed a farm in the heart of Tuscany, Italy.  I am ecstatic that this has finally come together.  At this point, all the gaps are filled.  We still have Ireland to plan, but thats our last destination, and therefore doesn’t worry me as much.  Since we don’t have a ticket home to Florida yet, should Ireland prove to be impossible to book, we just go home early; not preferred of course, but definitely better than having a two week gap to try and fill on a limited budget.

Needless to say, I’m relieved.  At least I can stop stressing for now; you know, until I have to magically come up with all the money for this, despite the fact that the exchange rate from the USD to EUR has NOT been moving in our favor?

Okay, I’ll take the good as it comes, and worry about the rest when I need to.

Until next time, passer un bon week-end!

A volte devi solo punto. Parte II.

Alright, sorry for the long absence between Part 1 and Part 2, I’ve been unusually exhausted and busy planning for the rest of our summer and next fall.  But I’ll update you on all that later.  For now… where did I leave off?

Oh right, architecture.

So after gazing up at the extremely tall buildings long enough to make our necks hurt, we decided it was time to find the museum we were most interested in seeing.  We’re lucky it served as a double attraction too!  The Mole Antonelliana, one of Torino’s most popular tourist attractions, was the tallest masonry structure in Europe until recent years.  Its a very neat looking building, with a large dome like roof.  Nowadays, it houses the National Cinema Museum, naturally something my movie-buff boyfriend would enjoy.  There’s also an observation deck that you can take a lift to at the top of the building, but we opted not to.  Not that we wouldn’t have thoroughly enjoyed the view of the city from its tallest point, but the wait was nearly 3 hours long, and it wasn’t worth wasting our afternoon over.  So we settled for just seeing the museum.  For general film and cinema fans, we really enjoyed it.  The most interesting part of the museum was its archeology of cinema exhibit, which displayed some of the earliest attempts at animation, like Chinese shadow puppets, and hand shadows, all the way through Edison’s Kinetoscope and so on.  It was a really interesting place, and served as a break from the sun during the hottest part of the day.  That being said though, it was very warm in the museum.  I don’t suppose they thought they would need to air condition it.

After the museum, we decided we needed a snack, and decided to walk in the general direction of the Po River, where as expected, there was another piazza.  Only this one was filled with one of the most beautiful sights I have ever seen: a chocolate festival.  Yes, ladies and gents (especially you ladies), a frickin’ chocolate festival.  Why do we not have these in the United States?!  Obviously, I couldn’t buy all the chocolate I set my eyes on, but we did find a few things.  The candy I decided to try were these little chocolate balls filled with limoncello.  I was completely excited about these, given how recently I’ve found out that I like limoncello.  I bought ten of them, took the first bite and loved it.  Jon took one too and said it was great.  The next seven however, were not limoncello.  A few of them were amaretto, a flavor Jon and I don’t care too much for, one that Jon got tasted like some sort of spicy olive oil, a few tasted of other liquors that I couldn’t quite put my finger on (these weren’t bad, but they weren’t limoncello either), and then the last one I had, I finally got another limoncello.  I was a little (okay very) disappointed, and so we set off to find something for Jon to get.  We found a stand that had slabs of chocolate with all sort of things in them, and noticed one with candied orange peels.  Yes, please!  He got some, and we actually made our little hunk last until the evening, since it was very rich.  Obviously, chocolate being as rich as it is, we needed something to drink, and found a little outside bar on the river and had a few bottles of water.

While sipping on our water we were confronted by the unfortunate truth of our exhaustion.  At this point, it was four in the afternoon, and we had been doing nothing but walking around in the sun for 6 hours.  We contemplated our options and decided to walk back through the piazzas to the Duomo, and then through the shopping districts to our hotel and rest up before dinner that evening.  It was either that, or fall asleep before dinner, which we’d been saving our money for all day long so we didn’t want to do that.  On our way back through Piazza Castello, we encountered a protest of sorts.  I took pictures of the signs and translated them when we got home, and all I can tell is that they’re upset about some sort of cultural ignorance and what not.  They were entertaining to say the least, and very loud.  After they got a little boring, we headed to the Duomo.

Now, I understand the significance of the Duomo di San Giovanni Battista (St. John the Baptist); its not only the largest church in Torino, but it also houses the ever so confidential Shroud of Turin.  It was beautiful, like most large important churches.  That being said, Jon and I once again felt underwhelmed.  Having seen the Cathedral in Sevilla, Spain (the 3rd largest in the world) , the National Cathedral in Washington DC, and Jon having seen the ceiling height of St. Vitus Cathedral in Prague, I’m confident that I have been spoiled.  I don’t think I’ll feel overwhelmed by a Cathedral until I visit the Vatican.  Regardless though, it was still beautiful.  Next to the Duomo was a little thing that showed an archeological find underneath it, and a little further away in front of the Antiquities Museum, there’s another archeological dig.  My goodness, I wonder what’s under Torino.

On our walk back to the hotel, we came across a guy beat-boxing.  At first it sounded really annoying, until I realized he was layering each level of the song right there in the street, and once it all came together it made a lot more sense.  I bought some freshly popped popcorn and enjoyed the little show.  Then we proceed to our hotel, drained from the day and eager for a nap.

Well, the nap didn’t exactly happen, anyone that knows Jon well knows that he can’t even think about shutting his eyes more than a blink without putting a movie on.  Unfortunately, it was a great movie, which resulted is no sleep.  But at least it could be counted as rest.  When the movie was over we freshened up and set out in search of dinner.

Oh, on our way to dinner, we saw a DeLorean.  How cool!?

We saw a place the night before that looked promising, due to the fact that it was full of locals, but when we got there we realized it wasn’t really a restaurant, just a bar that served some food.  I hadn’t fought my way through the market for a cheap lunch to have bar food for dinner.  So we walked down the street a little further and found a nice restaurant on the corner.  In Europe, they usually display their menus outside, so we consulted it, noticed it was completely in Italian and basically came to the conclusion that we’ll have that problem everywhere, we may just have to cross our fingers, point, and hope for the best.  Well, to our pleasant surprise, when we were handed the menu it had an English version inside.  We consulted it, ordered a drink, two courses, and were given a free aperitif on the house.  Jon’s first second course choice wasn’t available anymore, so when he was put on the spot to pick something else, he saw a meat with some sort of blueberry sauce, pointed and said I’ll have that.  So much for taking advantage of the English menu, because we had no clue what he was getting.

The first course came out, along with our drinks, and we both ordered a cheese gnochi with a Muscato wine reduction.  The wine was in a separate little bowl and you dunked each bite in the wine before eating.  Best finishing touch ever.  We decided we have to try to recreate it when we get home.  Our main course came and we realized that Jon ordered something quite delicious.  It was a region specific beef, of which the name fails me, but it was extremely tender, and went quite nicely with blueberries.  The fact that we were in Italy meant this meal took about three hours, they move very slow there, but not in the “my service really sucks” kind of way.  They just enjoy every possible second of life to the fullest, enjoy every last bite and drop of wine like it could be their last, and every conversation as if its the only thing in the world at that moment.  Its really a nice way to live, only we were growing more tired by the second.  We had planned to take some night photography shots after dinner, but by the time we finally left, all we wanted to do was sleep.  We practically had to hold each other up on our walk home, but that didn’t stop us from getting one last thing of gelato for dessert.  When we got back to the hotel, we pretty much fell asleep before our heads even hit the pillow.

Our 6:30 alarm came a lot quicker than we’d expected.  At the time, we hadn’t realized that it was because Jon’s phone had changed times for Daylights Saving Time, and therefore we lost an hour of our precious sleep.  It wasn’t until after we checked out of the hotel and arrived to the train station that we figured this out.  However, when we did arrive we were met by the horrors of the Italian train system.  Our train’s time had changed by 30 minutes, and not the in the preferred direction.  We were supposed to have a 7:30 train out of Torino, but all the boards said 8:00.  After doing some mental math and consulting the times we had written down for a second train, we realized that this would get us to our next train station 45 minutes after the train left, because not only was it 30 minutes later, but it was taking a different route, that already took longer.  So, not really having many options, we hopped on the train, very tired, very frustrated, and at least I was very worried.

This train wasn’t as comfortable as the last, but it wasn’t awful.  I did my best to sleep the whole time, since the grey skies didn’t make for good sightseeing.  When we arrived at our next train station, it was raining, and I was worried.  After consulting the boards on the platforms, we grew quite frustrated because apparently zero trains go to France, only we knew that couldn’t be the case.  Thankfully, while walking to the information desk we saw a screen inside the station with all the French train times.  I think the could have at least had this information on the platforms, heaven forbid I had 10 minutes to transfer and missed it because I was looking for the screen to tell me where to go.  Well, our next train was about an hour away; we got some pizza, another thing of gelato, and waited ever so impatiently, dozing off every time we  sat in one position longer than a few minutes.

I don’t remember much about our last train home, or our walk to our apartment.  When we got home, our family greeted us, and Nicolas decided that he was going to bug me endlessly to play with him, despite the fact that he saw me with my hands full.  After much frustration trying to figure out what to say to a French 3 year old without upsetting him to the point of screaming, of his parents hating me, I blurted out “Je ne peux pas jouer maintenant, je suis fatiquee!” He proceed to bang on our door for a few minutes, all without his parents caring or noticing.  Not exactly my idea of a nice “welcome home”.

All and all, I’d say it was a learning experience.  I did enjoy Torino; I think its a beautiful city, the food is wonderful (and cheap!), and if I had the time or money to do any shopping, I definitely had my fair share of options.  There’s a lot of history, a lot to see, and a lot of gelato to be eaten.  Given that trains will be our main form of transportation for the second part of our trip, I’m not looking forward to getting on another one.  I hope every other countries’ train systems are better than Italy’s.

Well, you know what comes next.  Pictures!

The National Cinema Museum

And the top since its too tall to fit in one picture.

Oh you know, just some masks.

And just a lion.

The ceiling in the NCM

Just some film physics.

These are very popular in Europe. I think it needs to catch on in the US

Mmmm… Chocolate.

Po River

Us by the Po River

One of the better statue men of the day.

Protest

Protest

Protest

Protest

The Duomo

Inside the Duomo

Inside the Duomo

Candles in the Duomo

The Last Supper above the entrance

Flowers left in the Duomo

Pretty light

Some archeological find under the Duomo

An archeological dig outside of the Antiquities Museum

Beatboxer.

The DeLorean

I wonder if it can still hit 88 miles per hour.

La mozzarella è migliore in Italia: Parta Prima

Since I know very little Italian, I hope Google Translate doesn’t fail me this time! But hey! Look to the right! I finally got to use a different category!

I’ve been some what dreading this post, simply due to the magnitude of information and experiences I feel the need to share with you.  I learned a lot in a very fast three-day period of time, some good and some not so good.  Regardless, it must be said, so I’ll do so in parts.  Here goes nothing…

First let me say, I don’t think trains will become my preferred method of travel any time soon.  Especially in Italy.  This was my first time riding a train, and I found the whole process to be extremely unorganized.  I can’t exactly figure out why a more efficient and organized system can’t be implemented, because I thought of several things that would help just waiting for our first train.  I think it just boils down to the Southern European mentality.  Why bother?  It works just fine.  Except when it doesn’t.  I’ll get to that later though.

I will say that riding a train through the mountains in Italy had its ups.  Literally, my ears were popping like crazy.  Haha.  But in all seriousness, the views were spectacular.  At one point we were high enough that we got to a little mountain town just covered in snow.  It was beautiful, and for a few moments I seriously wished we had gotten off the train there.  Also, unlike in a car, I was able to read comfortably without feeling sick to my stomach after a few paragraphs, which made the nearly 5 hour train ride a little less annoying.

Once we arrived in Torino, we found that our hotel was much closer to the train station than we had originally anticipated.  We also found out that 3 stars must not have the same meaning in Europe that it does  in the United States.  The reviews we read promised that someone at the desk always spoke English, which we found to be untrue, that there was a good continental breakfast, which their wasn’t, and that the rooms were nice.  The room really wasn’t bad, just extremely small.  Not a huge deal, since our plans didn’t include staying in the hotel all day anyway, but we definitely didn’t feel like it was worth what we spent on it.  But alas, in Torino, all lodging is expensive, especially in the center of town.  If we wanted cheaper, we would have had to stay 10 miles or so out of the city’s center, which is quite difficult when you don’t have a car.

After we settled in and relaxed for a few minutes, we set out to try and find some pizza.  I’ve decided, after visiting Italy, that there is just no justifiable reason for Chicago style pizza.  Italians eat it like the New Yorkers do, and it will always be my favorite.  It was simple, and delicious.  We followed this with some real Italian gelato (which tastes pretty much just like any other gelato, but thats not to say it wasn’t delicious) and a walk to do some exploring.  We found a lot of what we planned on further investigating the next day, and bought a map of the city with all the popular tourist attractions marked on it.  It was actually kind of cool- they had those “You are here” maps in a few places, and on the side of the case it was in had a thing where you put 50 cents in and you get the same map that was displayed.  50 cents well spent, because it had everything, and in Italian, English, Spanish, French and German.  We headed back to the hotel a little earlier than we probably would have normally so we could get some proper sleep for the following day.

I have to gloat a little, because I’m proud of the fact that not only did I manage to get up and out of the hotel by 10 AM, but I also managed to shower, put make up on and straighten my hair.  Usually when I try to leave the house that early, I only manage to get the first done.  But the Italians are quite fashionable, I couldn’t let a lazy appearance scream “I’m a tourist” any more than my freckles already were.  I even remembered to bring and wear my contacts so I could actually wear my sunglasses, that I actually remembered to bring.  I was feeling quite organized.

On our handy little map, we saw a market just past the Duomo.  It being a Saturday, we figured that would be the perfect place to start.  After frequent stopping to take pictures of things (we were easily distracted), we arrived around lunch time and the market was thriving.  I’ve nicknamed it “The War Zone” because it is serious there.  Crazy even, but totally exhilarating.  Since we did arrive later than we’d hoped, we decided to buy some bread, some cured sausage (closer to a salami maybe, or those summer sausages that are popular around the holidays, but obviously much better), some fresh mozzarella di buffalo, a bottle of Sprite, an orange, and some beautiful little tomatoes.  We ended up with (on accident of course) about 4 people’s worth of food, all for under 12€.  Food is really pretty inexpensive in Italy, and since a small town close to Torino serves as the home office to the Slow Food Movement, it was all incredibly delicious.  We found a nice little place to sit down and enjoy “the goods” and then ended up giving the rest away to a homeless lady we saw with a baby on our way to the market.  It would have gone bad on such a warm day in my purse, or been smushed.   Good food, and good karma.  Yes, please.

Everything in Torino just seemed huge.  The plazas (called piazzas in Italian) were much bigger than any I’ve seen in France, and flanked by gigantic, ancient buildings on all sides.  This I found a little overwhelming, but in a good way.  I also wasn’t all that surprised (and neither was Jon) by the sights simply because of how over-taught Roman architecture is in most European history courses.  This didn’t make it any less beautiful of course, but I felt like I wasn’t seeing it for the first time.  I did enjoy seeing the sort of buildings that modern architecture was based on though.  I find architecture extremely interesting, and if I had any talent with a pencil I may have considered majoring in it, but alas, my Uncle Jay will have to remain the family architect for now.  All that being said, Torino really was beautiful, and considerably cleaner than France.  It had the same little silly trash (like cigarette butts and small pieces of paper and such) that most big cities have, but not in excess, and they didn’t leave their dogs poo in the streets.  It was nice to look up while I walked for a change.  I’ve always known the Italians to be proud (proven by the abundance of Italian flags, even though this may have been because they’re currently celebrating their 150th birthday), so the fact that it was cleaner than France didn’t surprise me.  It was refreshing, to say the least.

To be continued… (but not without some pictures!)

Torino Porta Nuova. The biggest train station I’ve ever seen.

My first gelato

Jon’s first gelato

The market, AKA “The War Zone”

The market, AKA “The War Zone”

The market, AKA “The War Zone”

The market, AKA “The War Zone”

The market, AKA “The War Zone”

The market, AKA “The War Zone”

The goods.

The yummy little sandwiches we made.

This is what we ate next to. Where else?

And the view just behind us.

The Civic Museum of Ancient Art in Piazza Castello

Roman Architecture. & See, a bunch of Italian flags!

Roman Architecture.

Royal Palace in Piazza Castello

Roman Architecture.

Roman Architecture.

Us in Piazza San Carlo