Blogs from Piedmont, Italy, Europe - page 29

My fall break was great. It all started off in Turin, Italy (think back to the winter olympics '06) and that in itself was pretty cool. It was for an event called Terre Madre & Salone del Gusto. So basically it's an event or a huge meeting held once every two years all about saving and preserving foods from disappearing off the earth (think like the endangered species of the animal world) and sustaining local food production and the people who are responsible for it all. As well as tasting foods from all over the world in a place that was bigger than the Jacob Javits center in NYC. We stayed in a hotel where they used to house the athletes so it was all very new and clean looking. Anyway, before even getting to the ... read more

Geo: 45.9215, 8.55156Having spent a couple of days immersed in the vineyards around Barolo we headed north to Torino this morning. This was a pleasant drive on another cool but sunny day. We drove into Torino about 11-30 but did not have a detailed map. Made a wrong turn and then roadworks made the correction time very slow. Eventually, Marg found the city map and we headed back into the centre. Stopped though at the river where there was a fabulously ornate fountain with statues representing the various months of the year. nearby was the Borga Medioeval, a reproduction Medieval village and castle constructed in 1884. We had a wander around there admiring the detail that had been put into this. There were several brides also there posing for pictures in this attractive setting. Drove into ... read more

Hi everybody! I guess I should start off with a little bit about my program. It's called USAC and is based out of Las Vegas. Where I study in Torino is a a branch of the Universita di Torino but it's part of the business school. I live 2 blocks away from school and all classes are in one building. The USAC program consists of a lot of americanos/as and some other countries as well. So far I have met a lot of people and have to frequently ask what their name is. There are about 70 people in our program, not including the Italians that will be in some of our classes. I made the almost 10 hour flight (special thanks to O'HARE and their contribution of a 1 and 1/2 hour delay). We got ... read more

Not Alessandria but Alessandria is the closest place in the database. Today we rode around 350 Km from Rimini to Tortoni. This was all motorway and from my point of view on pillion, not very interesting. Conditions were good and after Bologna it was not all trucks. We stopped at a motorway stop off for lunch which was very good. Just cheese and ham sandwiches, but excellent cheese and excellent ham - better than any you can get in the UK for love or money (and being motorway food, very cheap). Tortoni is abut 100 Km from Torino. As far as we know it is not famous for anything, it was just where we were ready to stop. Finding a hotel was not easy. We fund a central hotel but it was shut. We looked around ... read more

Hi all Lyndsay here! I am anxious to type this last blog because that means that we are coming home tomorrow and that is bad news. I heard snow is on teh horizon - how terrible. Again, I apologize for my spelling, the keyboards here are funny and seems to be missing some of the keys. In any event, here is our last 2 days in a nutshell ... On Thursday morning we left Levanto and hopped a train to MIlan, then to Stresa. The train to Milan put 6 people into smaller cars - almost like sleeping cars, but with 6 chairs. All is good until the 6th person (an older grandmotherly type) comes in - with her 40 lb. dog! Yep, in Italy, animals can ride in the train and bus with you, you ... read more