Sarturday, 15 May, 2010

Went for a walk through the village and up into the country-side - a fine day with the Alps, covered in snow, very clear in the distance - vineyards, green hills, farms, small charming houses.There is no doubt that Tuscany is a special place, but a few million others have also figured this out so regions like this that are less well known give you the feeling that you are "discovering" Italy (of course it has never been discovered before). Enjoyed a lovely breakfast of fresh fruit, pomegranate juice, coffee and, interestingly, home-baked vanilla cake - very nice. Thanks very much to Georgio and Patrizia for a great stay. We did not realise how close we were to Turin, and Georgio convinced us that it was well worth a visit, so we headed off to there thinking it would be fairly quiet on a Saturday morning - not a smart assumption. The traffic was fairly crazy heading on, although quite polite as has generally been the case - some of our driving on the big roundabouts certainly tests their patience and their rarely used horns received a bit of a work out. Then we passed a park with masses of buses and a line of people about 1 K long - there were waiting to visit the Shroud of Turin, on display for the first time in many years. Found a park in what we figured was close to the centre (you have to be careful in these larger cities as the centres are restricted to resident cars and they photograph every car going in and fine those without a permit). Walked down Via Guiseppe Verdi and had a coffee in Cafe Guiseppe Verdi (well, what else would you call it), obtained a map in a tourist booth and walked to Palazzo Madama. We then walked down Via Po. We did not know one thing about Turin before, but this may well be one of Europe's great streets - both sides have wide footpaths, covered, and with arches or porticos all the way along and lined with shops, both expensive and otherwise, particularly second-hand book shops and stalls - and naturally heaps of bars, cafes and restaurants. It ends at the River Po, opening out onto the huge Piazza Vittorio Veneto which contains many outdoor tables. There were many tourists, but they all seemed to be Italian, no doubt the main nationality coming to view the Shroud. We were very glad to have seen Turin, it is a lovely city, particularly with the back-drop of the Alps - unfortunately we could not do it justice (particularly the shops) in the short time we had available. Got away about 1.00pm and found the autostrada again, heading north towards Aosta and the border. At one stage the outside temperature was 25C. Had lunch in a motor-way services (some of these are really good, offering regional food of very good quality, along with expected junk food - it is strange to see them pouring draft beer behind a cafeteria counter). We were soon in the mountains, climbing to 1,900 metres, temperature 3C still in sunshine, then through the Grand S Bernard Tunnel, about 6ks long (23 Euro) and into Switzerland. Also entered what seemed like a new climate with light snow falling and windy. Descended down the valley and soon hit Lac Leman (Lake Geneva) and arrived in Lausanne about 5.00pm where Alex and his wife Rosie met us and took us to their lovely apartment. Fabulous dinner of salad, shrimp (prawns) in a cream, tomato and onion sauce with rice, followed by tirimasu. Alex's mother, Silvia, and Rosie's friend Marcia joined us and we discussed Switzerland, Brazil, Estonia, Australia and lot's else. Alex stayed with us in 2003 and it was great to catch up with him in his home town.