Torino

Thursday, we were yet again exhausted from travel and slept in till 12. Brandon was out of class, so he took us out into Torino again.

This time we were going to the Egyptian museum.

Due to recent events in Egypt, people raided the Egyptian museum in Cairo, thus leaving Torino to be the largest Egyptian Museum in the world. It is sad that people went in and raided their own museum, but it's cool for Torino, to be the largest in the world.

So we went to the museum, and were allowed to take pictures in most parts of the museum.
We saw the Book of the Dead. The actual one. lol. It is really cool, a lot of the archaeologists that discovered the Egyptian ruins and tombs and whatnot, were Italian. So when they went in and discovered all this stuff, they got a percentage of it to keep in their museums.

There were 3000 year old sandals, actual mummies, all sorts of crazy stuff.

The real mummies kind of freaked me out, since they still had hair and whatnot. It was creepy. lol.
So I didn't get any pictures of them, but oh my gosh, this museum was stuffed full of Egyptian things. They had dark rooms where they kept the old statues and whatnot.

They also moved a temple over. A huge REAL temple. It was really neat!!

So after we saw all that was Egyptian we headed back to Brandon's apartment, but we had to make a pit stop for canolis.

After Canoli's we went back to Brandon's and made Gnocchi. Which is a potato-y noodle from scratch.

 It was amazing. We also made an apple pie type dessert and had left over crust so we made bread. We also made fondue with fontina cheese, which is heavenly. We also had Moscato wine, which was glorious!! It was wonderful to have been able to spoil ourselves since it was our last night in Torino.

Until Next Time.....

Camogli

Tuesday, We decided to get out of Torino and head for the coast to the town of Camogli. It is a little fishing village with brightly colored houses!! It is stinking adorable!!!

We left Torino and rode the train to Genova, then took the train to Camogli. We got on the train and couldn't help but notice, or hear this gentleman....lol. SNORING!!! lol. 

So I was so kind enough to videotape this...haha. He kept getting louder and louder. We couldn't figure out if he was homeless or just really tired. lol. 

Before we left, Brandon gave us some directions to things around town, like the gelato shop and the tourist center. He gave us directions to the beach, and so that's where we headed to. We got to the water front street and decided to start looking around for food.

This was a super small town that doesn't receive many visitors, or at least visitors that don't speak Italian. So we decided to go to the restaurant that had their menu translated into English. It ended up being amazing.

After lunch we went down the street looking at the shops. There were only a few open since it was afternoon time, and Italians love their siestas.

 Siestas seem like a fabulous idea, unless you're trying to travel. Almost nothing is open between 12-4. So we ended up laying on the beach for a while. But when I say beach, I mean rocky area by water. lol. It was nice, and rather warm. We decided to put our toes in the Mediterranean Sea!

After laying on the beach for a while, we went back to see if some of the shops were open, and I went and bought a pendant.

Then we decided to find gelato. It is rumored that the best gelato in all of Italy is in Camogli. We went to this shop and tested it ourselves. It was amazing!!!!!

After gelato, we needed to start thinking about getting home. So we headed to the train station, only to find out the the machines in the train station stop selling tickets at 3. Our train didn't leave until 5, so we hadn't even thought about return tickets yet. When we finally got help from someone who knew where they were selling other tickets, they directed us to the tourist center. It was really lucky that Brandon gave us the directions there!!!

We bought our tickets and then walked around for a little bit, then caught the train back to Torino.

When we got back Brandon made us dinner!!!

Until Next Time.....

Torino

After the long weekend in Verona and Venice, we made it to Torino rather late. The next morning Brandon and his roommate Nate had to go to class, but Allie, Amanda, and I didn't have to do a darn thing. In Italy, most apartments have "garage door" type shades, where it literally blocks out 100% of the light through the windows. The window coverings go down at night to help keep the apartment warm, and Brandon didn't put them up since we were still sleeping. The three of us ended up sleeping in til noon! It was amazing!! By then Brandon was out of class, and took us around Torino.
We took the metro downtown, and walked the Via Roma. The Via Roma, is the fancy street in Torino. The sidewalks are marble and Rolex, Luis Viton, Chanel, among others have stores there. We walked down toward the old palace and showed Allie and Amanda around. Well around the corner from where we were is where the Shroud of Turin is held. For those of you who that doesn't ring a bell for. There was a shroud found that is supposedly the wrappings of Jesus's body. They x-rayed them, and it shows a face and injuries/blood stains. It is really interesting, and we went to the church where it is held. It only comes out of its box when the Pope says so, and it hasn't come out since 2005. There is a different church around the corner from that, that has an original size copy of the shroud so you can get close to it and see it. So we went to both of those churches, and then we were off to the Chocolate Festival. Italy is celebrating it's 150th year of being a country this year, and so they are going above and beyond on all its events. We went to the Chocolate festival, and it was AMAZING!!!!

There is one really big tent holding an exhibition, where an artist made a giant sculpture of Italy and some of its landmarks out of chocolate!!!!! VERY COOL!!!

Additionally there were tons of other tents with sponsors and sellers selling chocolate in all forms!!!
We even bought chocolate with pop rocks in it!! AMAZING!! lol.
Brandon had gone to this festival before, and he had been telling me about this lamp that he was thinking about getting. So he showed us, and it is really cool! So we talked him into buying it!!

It was really cool.

Then after the chocolate festival we ate apperativo, which is an Italian style of eating, where you buy a drink and pay 9 euros, but the bar puts out food and you can eat all you want of that. So there was like salad, and appetizers, and whatnot. It was really good, and I got a pina colada!! yum!

After aperativo, we headed back to the metro. Along the way we stopped at Grom, a really good gelato shop.


We headed back to Brandon's apartment, with sore feet and relaxed.

Until Next time....

Venice

We jumped on a train and headed to Venice. It was a nice break on the feet since we had walked so much around Verona. We got to Venice and walked out the front doors of the train station and we were already on the Grand Canal.
Going to Venice had been Allie's dream forever!!

 It was so cool to see this come true for Allie. So our first priority was FOOD! It was Sunday, so lots of things were closed, but we found a restaurant open. We sat inside, and Brandon and I got chips pizza!!!

Yum!!

Then after eating we headed on foot to the "Rialto" Bridge. We only had a few hours in Venice, so we had to make the most of it. We decided not to wait for the water taxi's to go to St. Mark's Square. We walked through the back streets and we got to see a lot more of Venice.

 There were many beautiful things along the way to the bridge, like other smaller bridges!! lol.
We got Gelato, and it was delicious!!

We made it to the Rialto Bridge!!

There was a military type showing, and we had a bit to walk around and then it was time to turn around. We had a to catch one train to be able to hit the connecting train to Torino.

Venice was beautiful, and I would love to go back.

Until next time.