Torino - A Friend And His Family

(June 21-23)

Me and Stefano atop the Antonelliana

Piazza Reale

Stefano and I

Inside the Torino Duomo, the light shines through ceilings int he windows and into those holes to reveal magnificent painting depending on the time of day

Torino Duomo

Palazzo Castello

Piazza Vittorio Veneto

Piazza San Carlo - hosted the opening ceremonies of the 2008 Olympic Games

Stefano and I from the Abbey above Torino

Torino and the Alps

Stefano's abode

The city from Castello Rivoli

The Abbey from below

View from Antonelliana

Sunset from Stefano's backyard

Night time in Piazza San Carlo

Me and il mio amico

From the top of the Antonelliana

Last sight of the Alps

I had been going back and forth for a while on whether or not I wanted to travel during last week in Leuven. I had an ongoing debate between wanting to take one final trip and wanting to be in my “home” for three more days. Ultimately I came to the conclusion that I had an 11 day break and I wouldn’t mind taking one last adventure to redeem my Berlin experience. Thus, during my final weeks in Leuven I contacted a good friend from first semester and decided to travel to his home town.

Stefano took me in with open arms and was excited to show me around his hometown of Torino, Italy – something evident by the amount of places he had planned for us to visit over my short 2 days visiting him. We hit the ground running when I arrived as I threw my backpack full of clothes into the back of his car and headed out to see the city. Our goal on my first day was pretty simple – see everything that made the city of Torino famous.

Stefano guided me – quite sleepy from having been up for almost 24 hours – through the city of Torino to all the famous and favorite sites. We started at the Piazza Castello, which had most of the main sites of the old city. The brown stoned Castle in the center of the square was only one of the major attractions in the center of the city. In addition, to the Castle, the Palazzo Reale and the Torino Duomo where the Shroud of Turin (what is believed to be the death cloth of Christ) resides were also in the main town center. We ended our first day at an old Abbey on the hillside overlooking the city. The sacred grounds, which also served as a memorial to the 1950 Torino soccer team plane crash, provided a birds-eye view of the surrounding areas and were a perfect finish to my first day in the friendly city.

Torino was the site of the 2008 winter Olympic Games and as a result, the Olympics were a common theme for Stefano’s guided tour. He took me through most of the famous sites that were snow covered during the Olympic Games. The reminders of the games are still evident throughout the city as the famous 5 intertwined rings adorn many of the buildings new and old.

If there is one recommendation I have for future world travelers, it’s this: make friends, and then travel to their hometowns. There is nothing quite like seeing a city through the eyes of its inhabitants. It’s the best way to find the authentic back alley places and to see the favorite sites of its residents.

This point was probably best emphasized during my travels through Torino and its surrounding areas with one my amici Torinesi. Over the course of the next two days, Stefano took me out and about around Torino, going everywhere from the heart of the city to the medieval castles that protected it. The highlights among the areas outside the city which we saw were three Castles: Vanencia, Rivole, and Raccognigi. We spent my second day in Torino seeing most of these sites in addition to the FIAT factory (kind of redundant) and then heading into the city to look at it from above atop the high spire of the Antonelliana.

Perhaps the greatest allure of traveling to the hometown of a friend, especially an Italian friend, is getting to stay in their home for the duration of the trip (and getting home cooked meals). Stefano’s family welcomed me into their home for my visit. They live in a beautiful country home built into the hills across from the Alps on the outskirts of Torino. Besides the home cooked meals prepared by Stefano’s mother and practicing my Italian with his father, the view from their back porch was probably the most magnificent aspect of their home. The white tips of the Alps jutted into the sky and provided the perfect backdrop for the valley below which was coated in the red Mediterranean rooftops which characterize Italian countryside’s. The Alps, which played host to fog and sunsets while I was visiting, casted a magnificent aura out from behind their peaks.

I spent my last night on their back porch staring out over the valley and mountains in the distance and for the first time it hit me that this was really my last great adventure in Europe. I had a years worth of memories flash through my head as I stared out over the Torino landscape. Sure I would travel a bit more around Belgium, but not quite like traveling around the European continent. It was with great sadness that I left my friend early on Wednesday morning – my flight leaving at 9am – and as I flew over the Alps fresh in the morning sunshine, the reality sunk it. This would be my last time flying over that mountain range, this would be my last time flying “home” to Belgium.