A sunny day in Torino

Rob one day post marathon -I'd be in bed!

Sculpture near the University

Typical street scene -many streets are long and have a vista- an important monument, palazzo, piazza etc. There is a lot of very structured layout in this city and it works although it can be a bit impersonal -it's about the buildings not the people.

A bit chilly and I forgot gloves -haven't really needed to wear them so far

There are many nationalistic monuments and sculptures -these in front of Palazzo Madama are an example.

Red , green and white plastic boxes strung across Piazza di Citta' by day

and by night

On Mondays many museums, galleries and shops are closed (especially some of the smaller ones) so we decided to go on one of those 'hop on hop off' bus tours around the city.  It was really worthwhile and we had great seats. We wandered around the city for the rest of the day & had lunch at a small cheap restaurant called 'Al Solito Posto' -not up to the standard of our favourite 'Il Solito Posto' in Melbourne but good local food.

Walking along this street you would never expect that there is anything impressive to see.

Then all of a sudden you come across the Mole Antonelliana - currently the home of the National Museum of Cinema.  We're going soon -it was closed when we were there.

  

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mole_Antonelliana

The tour bus driver had this space to get through in a large double decker bus

She had  just centimetres! There are so many skillful Italian drivers who negotiate tiny spaces like this everyday without slowing down - and not many paint scrapes! Pretty impressive

The Po has gone down and everything seems pretty much back to normal

Rob ha fatto la Maratona di Torino!!!!!

Rob ran in the Torino Marathon today, three weeks after the Venice Marathon!  He originally registered in the Torino marathon around the same time as the Venice marathon just in case he missed the Venice marathon.  Anyway, he finished the Marathon today in 4hrs 47mins -about 16mins faster than Venice.

He didn't tell anyone that he was going to do the marathon (apart from nostri figli) because he only really decided last night  and didn't change his diet etc -except he had a beer with dinner instead of a glass of wine :).

No more marathons while we are away! 

In Via Roma on the way to the start in Piazza Castello

 

 A very cold and bit nervous Rob

Getting colder hanging around

The start was about 30mins late and they had the usual national anthem etc.  These were the 'ordinary' runners the elite runners were a little further in front -Rob was put with the elite runners in Venezia by mistake :)  During the pre-race announcements Rob was mentioned as being a"straniero da Australia" who was participating.  I was videoing part of the start for family and happened to jag that bit :) The runners were pretty much all Italian whereas the Venice Marathon had a lot of people from other countries.

Rob near the finish line

Checking his time at the end

Pretty tired at the end.  Those legs didn't have much left.

Rob was very happy to have finished -just a little tired :)

Egyptian museum Torino

The Torino Museo Egizio was one of the main reasons that we decided to go to Torino. A few years ago we saw a fabulous collection at one of the galleries in Vienna as well as the travelling Egyptian collections which came to Perth and loved seeing the amazing pieces -  but they were nothing in comparison with the collection in the Museum here. Where the Vienna gallery exhibition was all about style, the Torino museum is all about content.  There is just so much to see and the pieces on display are incredible in quality, quantity and are in amazing condition. According to a pamphlet that I read, the collection will be rehoused in 2013 so that everything can be better displayed.

We have only seen the first floor so far.  We spent about three hours taking it all in -it is somewhat overwhelming. The temperature in the museum is really high and we were just about passing out from the heat -being dressed for the 13C temp outside. We will see the other two floors next week.

The photos were all taken with Rob's phone -senza flash. Just about everything is behind glass so the photo quality is about as good as we could get -for some reason I couldn't get the flash to stay off on the camera that I'd taken.

Torino at night

Dusk and the lights have just come on

The evening passeggiata under snow lights made from recycled plastic bottles

Piazza Castello being set up for the marathon -should be exciting

More lights with a stellar theme

SIgns of the zodiac

Tagliatelle ai carciofi

Spaghetti con speck e asparagi

Poetry in lights -we haven't been to the beginning yet to follow it all the way through

Last night was beautiful -very clear and not too cold. It's foggy and going to rain today so it's good that we got some photos last night.