Torino 2.7.06-2.26.06
My journey started the moment I left Chicago for my overseas lag. The plane had to be de-iced before we could take off and that set back the flight by about an hour. When I arrived in Frankfurt I missed my plane to Nice France by about 10 minutes.
I had a lay over of around 5 hours in Frankfurt and I finally made it to Nice! I made it to the train station 2 hours after my scheduled train left and ended up having to take a regional train, which ended up being a lot longer than I expected.
When
I finally arrived in Torino it was such a relief. I met up everyone and
I was very excited to be there. It was quite nerve racking being that
this was my first International trip.
Torino is a city of unexpected size. It was at one time the capital of Italy and is now Italy's industrial capital. It has a wide assortment of statues, some small parks, and very small areas of green space (which was common in most cities). Although the city was very compact, it still introduced me to the art of walking. Everyday we put on a few miles, which was new for me.
The apartment that we stayed in was quite nice, as it should have been for the $20,000 USD that it cost for the 2 weeks we stayed. It was the top 2 floors of this nice villa that was within the city limits of Torino. The rooms were surprisingly large and the beds were equally uncomfortable. I was the lucky one that got the floor for the first week so that was good conditioning for the upcoming uncomfortable beds.
Each morning we would wake up and head over to Bank of America and have
a light lunch before we would head over to Pinerolo to watch the girls
curling matches. Although they did not come out on top, all of the games
were very close; most came down to the last rock.
We had a great time during our 2-week stay in Torino. Not only did we watch curling, we also attended some hockey games, both men's and women's and we also attended the freestyle aerials were really great.