Friday, May 15 – Aosta to Torino Transfer Day

Our drive to Torino (we departed at 9 am) was very rainy. We were on the look out for rice paddies during the drive, having seen them at a glance earlier and not quite believing that there were a lot of rice paddies in Italy (it is a pretty big crop in some areas!). The looping drive through the crowded city streets let us see markets, shops, and some streets with crests and flags strung up to form tunnels. We had to wait for our rooms to be opened up and received a brief welcome from a Torino Rotarian. Lunch (and any non-Rotary club dinners while staying in Torino) was around the corner at a restaurant called Da Giovannis. It is an art-filled, beautiful place. The food was delicious, ordered by Gianni.

Lunch at Da Giovanni's.

We then drove to the Economics and Business Faculty of the Università di Torino. We had a Rotarian Professor and an Assistant Professor as hosts, who greeted us with umbrellas at the bus. We went up to a visit with the Dean, also a Rotarian, in a beautifully furnished office. The chat about Rotary and the University was held around a humongous, ancient table. The table top was one, single large piece of wood. They are not made like that anymore! The cabinets were intricately carved and one of the torches from the Torino Winter Olympics was on display. We then moved from the more recently renovated part of the campus (all one, huge, attached complex of buildings) to an older part and got to see various statues, busts, and construction/renovation along the way to a room full of ancient frescos in stark contrast to the ultra-modern conference-room furniture.

One of the many statues and many of the plaques on the University campus.

That was our last scheduled visit for the day and Gianni lives in Torino, so was heading home every night during our stay there. Ruth had read about the Mole as a must-see, so Gianni ended up dropping us off there, after we picked up tourist maps of Torino and he pointed out the possible quick, interesting, or safe routes to walk back to the hotel. We went to the Mole. You start on the lowest level and take a glass elevator up through the center of a domed room, up into the center of the dome – where you get out for a panorama of Torino. You then take the elevator back down and tour the Cinema museum, which fills up the rest of the building. The museum is wonderfully designed to highlight such a visual medium as film that normally takes time to sit and watch. You can do that in lounge chairs in the main chamber (everything in that room was Rudolf Valentino during our visit). Otherwise the history of film is covered in higher levels of the museum, then genres, jobs, and posters in the chambers and walkways around the main chamber.

Me outside the Mole.

The interior of the Mole dome, with the elevator running up the middle.

View from the top.

Jim below a cool and creepy statue in the Cinema museum.

I toured the museum with Jim and we took a very leisurely stroll back to the hotel through piazzas, by a theater and a castle, many shops and stores, and down the Via Roma (the shopping street with Louis Vitton and the like).

Torino’s streets mostly have covered sidewalks, so you can enjoy them even on a rainy day (although the rain had stopped by that evening). Dinner was at Da Giovanni’s, which did not go as smoothly without Gianni around to help us order, but the waiter ended up choosing courses for us and we had a lovely meal.

Rehearsal for the next night's Amici concert/contest.