Torino

The first thing we noticed about Turin, before we even got off the train, was how blue the sky was. It was like a Disney film! The next amazing thing we noticed was a woman in a park with a pigeon sat on her head.


We stayed in a nice hotel with air conditioning so to be honest I'm surprised there's anything to blog about - we didn't want to leave.

We did a bit of research and found some things to do & see. I found the Basilica of Superga. Now, we've been in in Italy almost 3 weeks at this point & seen a LOT of basilicas and they all pretty much look the same but what was different about this one is that to get there you got on an old fashioned rack railway up the hill & there are really good views from the top.

Superga as seen from the city

So we got on this cool little train and up we went, it took about 20 minutes and was a really enjoyable ride. You could sneak a look at the view when there was a gap in the trees, the maximum gradient is 20%. When we got to the top we were really pleased we had decided to go on this trip, the view was ace. You could see all of Turin & the snow covered Alps. The photo's don't do it justice as you can imagine.

 A long long time ago Turin's football team - Torino F.C, known as Il Grande Torino, were apparently one of the best teams ever. At least 8 or 9 of their player's played  regularly in the national team. On 4th May 1949 the team were flying back from a friendly in Portugal when disaster struck. The plane flew into a storm so the pilot was forced to descend and the plane crashed into the embankment of this basilica killing all 31 passengers - 18 of which were 1st team players. The team had a few matches left that season so played their youth team, out of respect all the other teams also played their youth team. There is a shrine to the team where the plane crashed.

"Champions forever"

After doing this we had a walk round Turin and went in (another) church. However, in this church they reckon they've got a cloth that was used to cover Jesus's face after he was crucified - it does look like Jesus but I reckon someone just painted it on.

Turin is a really upmarket, clean, modern city and it was great to cool down a bit as its not anywhere near as hot as the other places we have visited.