Eat Torino!

We spent our third day on a day trip to Turin, which was beyond lovely for a number of reasons. First, my husband has been there before, so he knows some great things to see, do, and—most importantly—eat. This was all doubly exciting because the weather also finally played along, though only in Turin it seems, since Milan's streets were wet when we got back that night.

But before I tell you more about the city, here's a bit about the train ride there. As you'll see in the pictures, we had some lovely views of the snowy Alps on the way. You however won't see the school group of nine- and ten-year-olds that joined us on the journey. Two boys were seated across from us, happily chatting to each other and their classmates in Italian. Their names were Mohamed and Osama.

I've noticed that real-Europe and imagined-Europe are quite different places. Notably, real-Europe is much more diverse than we might think. And this is not some negative judgement of immigrants—look at me—for the moment at least I'm one too; albeit in a rather milky disguise. Anyway. The best part was when Mohamed decided to try some of his English on us. "Is you English?" [...] "I am Tunisia." I also learnt that these kids are as bad as Japanese ones at mastering the "What [noun] do you [verb]?" construction, as in "What subject do you like?" But clearly I'm tuned into the international curriculum of things kids might try to say. Mohamed likes math and English, by the way.

As we managed to communicate to our new friends mainly by way of gesture, our first target in Turin was the Mole Antonelliana, a major landmark and a good place to get a view of the city. We also visited the National Film Museum that is housed there. I'd love to go back there at a time when I don't feel like I'm wasting the lovely weather by being inside a museum.

After this introduction to the city it was time for lunch, so we headed to Evan's old favourite, the sFashion Pizzeria. Pizza with a view over a piazza, why yes please.

In the afternoon we strolled around, interacted with a street performer, and saw some Roman ruins that included the Roman Palatine Towers. For a traditional sweet treat Evan managed to locate Caffè Confetteria al Bicerin again. He already knows all the rules, like that you should not mix the different layers of your Bicerin.

After some more general strolling we made our way to Eataly. Now, if you have any kind of relationship with food, even if you don't cook and you just consume, you need to go there. And you need to go to the main one—Eataly Lingotto—that's a few train stops outside of the city centre. They have eeeeeverything. So much beautiful local produce, and so many beautiful packages, and many, many things to eat. The idea is that you seat yourself at a counter, pay about €1 for water and bread, and then order something from that section. We decided on the produce section and had some really delicious salad. If you go with more of an appetite there's nothing stopping you from eating at more than one section of course! We left just enough room to finish off with gelato: praline and pistachio for me, stracciatella and pistachio for him.

I can't even imagine how nice it would be to live near there and go shopping there often. But hey, here in Germany we eat Spanish and Italian produce all the time anyway, so that's kind of the same, right? Naaaaah. Anyway. Tomorrow I'll put up the final part, our last day in Milan, before I go to Antwerp again on Saturday morning. Can. Not. Wait!