Turin Day 4

On our last day in Turin we took the train to Asti, about an hour southeast of Turin. Asti is on the Turin-Genoa line, so it was incredibly easy and cheap to go there. Here's Kate at one of Turin's train stations, Porta Nuova. It was by far the nicest, cleanest train station we have been to in Italy.

Asti, along with the nearby town of Alba, has always been associated with Piedmont wine, especially the world-famous sparkling Asti Spumante.

The town center is clean (almost to a fault!) and fun to stroll through, with beautiful architecture, churches and towers. There were a handful of small museums too, but it was Monday so they were closed, unfortunately.

As we were there over the lunch hour and into midday, the town definitely observed siesta, and it was more or less deserted until later in the afternoon. Of course, no trip to Asti would be complete without a little wine tasting, and there were plenty of little wine bars (enoteca) around to sample the local product. We knew from our book on Italian wine from Eataly (see previous post) that Piedmont is known for its red Barolo, Barbera (this is popular in California, too) and Dolcetto (not sweet!) wines, along with its Moscato d'Asti and Spumante. These denominations are just the tip of the iceberg however, so anyone who loves wine would do well to visit the area for at least a week.

Despite Rob's broken Italian, this gentleman was nice enough to let us try numerous Piedmont reds (with generous pours and snacks!). We decided on a bottle of Pecchenino Dolcetto di Dogliani 2009 from the area around Cuneo in southwest Piedmont. But we could have easily bought more!

So, with our tastebuds tantalized (or perhaps destroyed) by lots of vino, we returned to Turin for a final evening stroll.

The major streets in the city are decked out with different holiday light schemes. This one had constellations. This was probably the best one, and the photo doesn't really capture how cool it looked.

In Piazza Castello, Turin's main square, there was a large nativity scene hand-carved out of wood. All the Torinesi were out on the town and it felt quite festive. We didn't want to leave!

One last look across the Po River. Arrivederci from Torino!

Turin Day 3

Our third beautiful day in Turin began with a few more chocolate stops. Here's the highlights:

This place made us a caffe mocha of sorts: a dish filled with chocolate, espresso and whipped cream and nuts! They had giant sized dishes too...so good.

Fully caffeinated and sugar charged, we headed for the National Museum of Italian Unification in the  Palazzo Carignano (http://www.museorisorgimentotorino.it/). This year marks the 150th anniversary of the unificiation of the modern Italian state, and, seeing as Turin was the first capital of a united Italy, it comes as no surprise that this museum (along with the city) was fully decked out to mark the occasion. The museum is gigantic, walking you through a detailed history lesson in late 18th and 19th century revolutionary politics. There are historical documents, maps, flags, costumes, you name it, while sophisticated video presentations throughout the museum (trilingual, thank goodness) help visitors contextualize the movement and its figures with other major political upheavals, especially the French Revolution. In a way, it was great to see Paris first and to visit all the monuments of the their revolution...it all fit together! None of our photos turned out too well, so here's the city seal of Turin that formed the centerpiece of a large wooden box containing something that we can't remember!

Afterwards we strolled through the city. The day was so clear that whenever you looked west down a street you saw the mountains. It reminded us of Colorado!

In this photo you can see the flags of Turin in blue and white (with the bull= Torino) and the regione of Piedmont in red and white. One thing we love about Italian towns is the display of local pride.

Ok, best part. We took the snazzy new Metro--only one line so far, mind you--down to Eataly, Turin's organic grocery store (http://www.torino.eataly.it/). If you have been to a Whole Foods in the States, Eataly blows it out of the water. In addition to food, Eataly has numerous restaurants, and the basement level includes an incredible wine cellar fully stocked with all of your Italian favorites...with free tastings too! We had lunch down here, sampled some Piedmont wine, and even bought a book all about Italian wine put out by the Slow Foods Movement (which actually started in Bra, just outside of Turin).

After our adventures at Eataly we took a jog north, back towards the center of town. The photo below looks east from Piazza Vittorio Veneto on the eastern edge of the historic center across the Po River. While most of Turin is flat and stretches west towards the mountains, the slim, eastern side of town along the river has beautiful hills and nice homes tucked away up windy roads. We especially like the Rotunda at the end of Via Po across the river, resembling the Pantheon in Rome. Its dedicatory inscription gives the old Roman name of Turin in Latin, Augusta Taurinorum. 

We ended our day on this eastern side of town by taking the an old cable car 3km up the hills to the Superga Basilica high above the city.

One interesting fact about this church is that it also houses the burial crypt for the French-Italian Savoy family whose political and architectural influence on Turin cannot be underestimated. The house of Savoy ruled Piedmont from the 16th century to the mid 19th century.

The views west from the basilica are superb, but we got there around dusk, so they didn't turn out as well as we would have liked! Below you can see the Po river and the Mole Antonelliana and, of course, the Alps.

Christmas Festivities

It's been a few days since our last post because we've had so many holiday parties to attend! It all started on Christmas Eve with a cocktail party at the Director's residence. This party featured salmon...an entire salmon!

On Christmas we had dinner at Loring Hall with about 20 others who live or stayed in Athens for the holidays. The main meal included quiche, asparagus, pork with prunes and chestnuts, rice with pine nuts, salad, and many different desserts.

Rob's favorite Christmas treat is called melomakarona which are basically soft molasses cookies soaked in honey. These are bite sized versions:

Finally on December 26 we celebrated Boxing Day with professors Joe and Leslie Day as our hosts. They had food and drink that we really hadn't tried before including caviar, boar pate, and kir royales.

Turin day 2

We began our second day in Turin with chocolate. The Turin visitor center sells a "ChocoPass" with coupons (on display in Rob's hot little hands) that allowed us to visit 8 chocolate shops to taste hot chocolate, tortes, and the local specialty called gianduiotto (a kind of prism-shaped chocolate with hazlenut), along with other various pralines and other treats. Chocolate is big business here and the locals take it very seriously. Each shop, packed with locals with holiday orders, had its own way of colorfully displaying their products. It was fun to sneak in for some sweets and listen in on the gab among the Torinesi, since you could tell that these were family businesses and everyone knew each other. One of our favorites was La Perla di Torino (http://www.laperladitorino.it/), a store that, in addition to making its own tasty treats, functioned as a sort of mega chocolate store with products of other well-known makers (e.g. Lindt) for sale. And of course we couldn't have chocolate without coffee so we made sure to have a few espressos along with way, courtesy of Turin's (and Italy's, perhaps) best coffee company, Lavazza. We stopped at four shops on this day and still have some of the chocolate left over. Delicious!

Following a few chocolate stops we made our way to the Egyptian Museum. This collection is the second most important collection of Egyptian antiquities outside of Cairo, so they claim. The next photo shows a very colorful sarcophagus and Rob explains that Egyptian antiquities are preserved so well because of the lack of moisture in Egypt.

The room in the photo below held most of the major sculpture. Many of them are made from diorite which is a dark grey/black stone, so it was quite a change from the bright white marble we're used to seeing in Greece.

The sphinx I stopped to pose with was quite a sight. It's a body of a lion with the head of a man and it served as a protective figure in sacred temples of the gods.

Since 1578, The Cathedral of Saint John the Baptist (below) has housed the Shroud of Turin, the linen bearing the image of a man who died from crucifixion and widely believed to be the image of Christ. The shroud itself is not visible but lays in a long rectangular box covered with a cloth and a replica shroud with the image of the face hangs above the box for viewers to see. Religious scholars still debate whether or not the shroud is authentic and some have even argued that the image is a later forgery. But these debates do not stop Catholics and Christians generally from making the pilgrimage to visit the shroud.

Finally, we ended our evening with a trip to the Cinema Museum housed inside the Mole Antonelliana, the architectural symbol of Turin first conceived as a synagogue in 1862 by Allesandro Antonelli but eventually came into the hands of the Italian state which housed various museums in it. Since 2000 the film museum has been here (http://www.museonazionaledelcinema.org/index.php?l=en).

The Cinema Museum is a fascinating tour of the origins of moving pictures, from simple shadow puppets to the use of the camera obscura to cartoons all the way to modern film production, with plenty of helpful illustrations, hands-on material, a cafe/restaurant and a swanky giftshop with books, movies, you name it. In the center of the monument is a large open space devoted to film screening, and a glass elevator zips visitors up from the ground floor of the monument past the upper levels to the top with panoramic views of Turin and the Alps (the first photo we posted of Turin was from the top of the Mole). We had a great time here, and as you can see from the photo below, we ended up in a scene from the Matrix, alongside Keanu Reeves! The Italian tourists alongside us kept laughing at this video, as it was displayed again on a larger screen for all to see.

Happy Hanukkah

Rob and I have the good fortune of meeting people with a wide variety of backgrounds, experiences, and religions while living in Greece. Our Jewish friends held a Hanukkah party at Loring Hall tonight to teach us about the traditions and history of their religion.

Hanukkah has a complex history but generally it commorates the victory of the Jewish people and rededication of the Holy Temple in Jeruslem in the 2nd century BCE. Tonight we lit several Menorah and had traditional Hanukkah foods (foods fried or baked in oil) including latkes and doughnuts.

Turin: Day One

Now that Rob and I are back in Athens with free internet we can post a few blogs about our experience in Turin (Torino). We had a great time, ate a lot of good food and chocolate, and met many wonderful people. Shhh, don't tell anybody though because the Torinesi don't want it to become the next tourist destination.

After departing from Paris via Charles de Gaulle we flew direct to Milan Malpensa and took a bus straight to Turin bypassing Milan completely. Unfortunately it was a hazy day and the mountain views we were hoping for during the bus ride didn't work out. After dropping our bags at the hotel we headed out for a pizza lunch followed by a visit to the city center known as Piazza Castello, in which you see the Palazzo Madama in the photo below.

Palazzo Madama houses the collections of the Museo Civico d'Arte Antica, Turin's municipal museum of ancient art. The name of the museum is a bit of a misnomer, as the collections also include medieval and renaissance art. As you can see from the picture it's an interesting building with a medieval back and tower with a Baroque facade on the front. From the tower we were able to see most of the city including Piazza Castello, which was being set up with a giant wooden nativity scene and advent calendar.

The Palazzo Madama also had a special exhibit going on that featured Michelangelo's Madonna col Bambino. The museum website succinctly describes the drawing as follows: "In this large sheet, Michelangelo expands on the theme of the Virgin nursing the Child, with touches of intense physicality suggested by the protective embrace of the mother and the energetic gesture of her son. This is a preparatory sketch, though we do not know which final work it was for. The Virgin is seen looking towards the right, as though attracted by some sudden event, possibly with a tinge of apprehension brought on by her fears for the destiny of her son. Some light touches of black chalk show how the artist changed his mind, with the head of the Virgin originally bent forward, her eyes looking down. The Child emerges in sculptural relief, in a contrast of dark shadows, strokes of red chalk and touches of white light."

After our afternoon at the museum we strolled west along Via Garibaldi, the major pedestrianized shopping street, all lit up for the holidays, and finished with dinner at a great local wine bar called Tre Galli to sample the local Barbera wine and Piedmont cuisine--think butter and polenta instead of olive oil. The weather and views would be better the next few days, so check back for further updates!

Greetings from Piedmont

Rob and I have been enjoying our time at the base of the Alps. We've been getting to know the city of Torino by going to museums, sampling the chocolate and espresso in its many cafes and admiring the Baroque architecture and many fine views of the city. This photo was taken from the top of the Mole Antonelliana which is the symbol of the city and also includes the National Museum of Italian Cinema. Tomorrow we are planning to take an excursion to Piedmont wine country to a little village called Asti.

Farewell for Now

Our final day in Paris began with a walk around our neighborhood (the Marais). The Marais use to be a swamp until the 1500's under Francois I. At that time he had the Marais cleared and opened for development. In the photo below you can see the Place Des Vosges built in 1606 where Victor Hugo lived for 16 years. 

 Following our walk around the Marais we headed over to Pere-Lachaise Cemetery and paid our respects to Jim Morrison and Chopin.

Next, we took the metro to Place de la Concorde and visited the Musee De l'Orangerie which contains Monet's series of painted panels called The Water Lilies as well as the personal collection of art collector/dealer Paul Guillaume. This museum was the perfect size and definitely not as overwhelming as the Lourve or Musee d'Orsay.

This afternoon we finally had onion soup at the Christmas markets! It was fantastic as was the ham and cheese crepe and mulled wine (again!). After walking through the markets we headed home to relax and have dinner before going back out for one last blast...at the Pompidou Centre. What a place! If you're interested in modern art, this is the place for you. This museum gave great descriptions to help make sense of the objects you were viewing. We particularly enjoyed the art from 1905-1960 including works by Picasso and Matisse.

We are leaving Paris in the moring for Turin and are looking forward to letting things simmer for a while. (Which reminds me, I don't think we will have internet access in our hotel in Turin so next Tuesday might be the next post.) I think I can speak for both Rob and I when I say that Paris can be a very overwhelming place to visit. Our 4 1/2 day itinerary was very aggressive and I would recommend no less than 7 days to really get to know the history of the city and all it has to offer...preferably two weeks. We'll be back though, because that's just the kind of place Paris is.

Another day in Paris

It was another marathon day in Paris! We were out on the town for about 13 hours and took in everything imaginable. We started at Sainte Chapelle and enjoyed the gorgeous stained glass windows then walked next door to the Conciergerie which was the former royal palace and jail where Marie Antoinette was held before being beheaded.

Next up was the archeological crypt of Paris which holds the remains of Lutetia, the forerunner of present day Paris. It was really cool to see how the Romans actually founded the city and how the city as we know it came to be. 

Right above the crypt stands Notre Dame and although we had visited the interior of the Cathedral we decided it would be fun to climb its bell tower and meet the gargoyles.

It's a tradition in Paris to bring a lock and after writing you & your lover's name on it you lock it onto one of the bridges over the Seine River. 

If I had to live anywhere in the world it just might be in the apartments just above these three stores. It's my trinity...cheese, wine, and bread! Oh, and just to the left of the Fromager there is actually a meat store too. Yum.

Following a quick lunch from the boulangerie seen in the photo above we visited the Musee Moyen Age. It's a museum focused on the middle ages and it holds many tapestries including this one showing the wine making process. This museum is also unique because it's built into a Roman Bath (one of the best preserved in the world).

No visit to the Latin Quarter is complete without a trip to the Pantheon. The Pantheon in Paris is modeled after the Pantheon in Rome, however this version seemed much larger. It contains a crypt holding the remains of many famous artists, writers, etc.

After dinner at home we headed out to Angelina's for their famous hot chocolate. It was the best hot chocolate we had ever had! And, because the Louvre didn't close until 9:45 pm we headed over and spent another 2 1/2 hours finishing off the Denon wing and viewed some of the French and Northern European Renassance paintings in the Richelieu wing. Rob especially liked the Coronation of Napoleon.