Monday, February 15, 2010

Part Deux!

So I last left off with Carnevale in Bellinzona. I had to break it up for several reasons, many that involve going to class and lunch, but mostly because it would be the longest entry in the world. The day trip to Torino was a pretty epic long day, so that story alone deserved its own entry. So here goes...

Saturday:


So Amber, Matt & I decided to go to Torino as a day trip. It was originally planned to do a night there and just leave early the next morning, but one thing about Europe is that many trips can be done in a day. The trick is to get up super early and get back home pretty late. We weren't out late in Bellinzona (compared to my many other classmates) and when we got back at midnight I managed to get myself in bed right away. At 6am Amber and I woke up and zombied our way around the apartment. We literally had no words and basically pointed and grunted to convey messages to each other. By 6:50am we met up with Matt outside the villa in the frigid Swiss morning air. We did the fifteen minute walk to the train station at Capolago and waited outside in the cold for our train to pull up. There were actually two guys there on the bench either drunk or hung over from Carnevale and we knew this because they were wearing hot pink and purple wigs with grass skirts over their sweats.

We took the train from Capolago to Chiasso, which is only about a 20 minute train ride. When we arrived we purchased our roundtrip tickets from Chiasso to Milan, Italy and then sat down in this little cafe at the train station for a cup of coffee. We caught the train from Chiasso to Milan around 8:30-ish and continued on to Milan and from Milan to Torino. We arrived in Torino around 11:30am and luckily the weather was on our side. The sun was out which made the 45 degree weather so much more enjoyable.





First we walked down the street directly in front of train station which runs perpendicular. I don't know the name of the street because street signs are nowhere to be found, or at least I have no idea where Italians put them. The street had a nice overhang over this tiled floor and the shops all along the way included (but are not limited to) Gucci, Louis Vuitton, Mont Blanc, Swatch, Rolex, and H&M. It reminded me a lot of Fifth Avenue in New York City. Very high end and the street itself is really aesthetically pleasing. We continued on and walked through the squares which had tons of families out walking in the sunshine. Eventually we made it to the Piazza Reale which has the Palazzo Reale and the Palazzo Reale was the palace for the Royal House of Savoy. It's at the end of the piazza and has gates with statues out front and it's really something.

We walked on to go to the Mole Museum of Film and Cinema and honestly words cannot describe how amazing this museum is. It's SO COOL. They have everything in this museum regarding film and they even do the entire transition from shadow puppets and how people were interested by how they mimicked real life all the way to modern film. It was fantastic. I have never been so impressed by such a modern museum. That and the Hard Rock Vault in Orlando Florida are the coolest by far. I got to see original story boards from Star Wars and the original script for Psycho and Citizen Kane. They had chairs in the center of this museum which you sit in and can watch light shows on the ceiling and also watch scenes from movies in Italian in front of you on these huge screens. There is also this elevator that goes straight up the middle of the museum and it doesn't have an elevator shaft. It's just a free hanging elevator with all the cables hanging from the ceiling. And around the main room are different themed rooms and each room is a different genre of film (horror, first films made, westerns, dream sequence, etc). We literally spent 3 hours in this museum because there was so much to do. It only cost 5 euros and it was worth every single euro. Oh and did I mention the Mole is the tallest museum in the world? I believe it, you can see it over the entire skyline of Torino.



After that we had our pack lunch on the bench outside of the museum. We made our way back towards the Piazza Reale on our way to Palatine Towers. On our way there we started to see people in costumes for Carnevale. As we approached the piazza we heard music blasting and when we arrived at the same piazza where families were earlier there were now hundreds of people filling the square. I mean hundreds packed in dancing to music with vans all over the place playing different music. People were drinking in the streets and hanging out celebrating Carnevale. It was insanity to the max. It was unbelievable that this just materialized literally out of nowhere while we were in the museum. We pushed our way through the crowd and enjoyed seeing people in all the different costumes having a good time. The Palatine Towers aren't too far from the piazza so we managed to get there relatively easy.  The Palatine Towers is this medieval Roman gate that used to be one of the 4 main city gates of Torino and has two statues in front of Augustus and Julius Caesar. It's right by the palace and the il Duomo di Turin where the Shroud of Turin is located. Then we made our way back through the crazy rave in the center of town and walked to the Egyptian Museum which has the second largest collection of Egyptian artifacts next to Cairo. I believe it. The museum cost 3.50 euro and it was two huge floors of a ridiculous amount of Egyptian...just everything. Ranging from 3000 BC all the way to the Roman Empire. It was fantastic. I saw mummies and coffins and tombs and reconstructed chapels and tools. I literally saw everything. We spent about 2 hours in this museum and I took so many pictures because I couldn't believe all the amazing things that I saw. I couldn't believe that the collection they had acquired.

So after we walked out of the museum we headed back towards the square yet again because we saw a cheap pizzeria on our way to the Palatine Towers. Well the rave that was there and in full swing 2 hours prior was now completely gone. It was as if it had never happened. The square was pretty much vacant and the vans and venders and everyone and everything was all gone. We thought we had imagined it all because as soon as it arrived it had left and moved elsewhere. Crazy.




We got dinner at this pizzeria and had some cheap food which was delish. We then walked about a mile so we could go see the Po River and we also had a couple hours to kill. The river was spectacular at night and had this beautiful bridge that went over it with the archways and it was all lit up. After that we walked back to the train station tired and exhausted from our long day. We caught the 9:50pm train from Torino to Milan, which was just crazy. The train was filled with teenagers who all chain smoke  and they were drinking and loud. We were so tired that we didn't find much of it amusing and spent the next 2 hours in a haze of smoke and yelling italian boys. We got into Milan around 11:50pm and the train from Milan to Chiasso wasn't until 12:38pm so we spent our time walking around the freezing cold train station wasting time. We arrived in Chiasso around 1:45am and to our disappointment and upset the next train to Capolago-Riva San Vitale wasn't until 2:30am. We were heartbroken and tired and the Chiasso train station was the last place we wanted to be. It was covered in confetti and broken bottles and god knows what else because of Carnevale and in Europe they don't believe in heating train stations so it was freezing. We barely made it but kissed the Swiss train when it finally arrived, because one thing is certain: Swiss trains are freaking awesome compared to the crappy ugly Italian trains. There is this huge difference because the Swiss trains are so ridiculous nice (and expensive). We finally got back to Riva at 2:30-ish am and walked back to our apartment. I was in bed at 3am completely exhausted and my body sore as any other. I thought my entire body was going to give out because of pure exhaustion combined with the run and bike ride I did the day previous to this trip. I was literally feeling the burn...majorly.
Amber me & Matt in Chiasso at 2am completely worn out

The whole weekend was amazing. Torino was fabulous and by far one of my favorite cities. The museums and shops and city itself were so ridiculously cool. I want to go back already but probably won't make it there again until April.

It was a fantastic weekend, in total.

No comments:

Post a Comment