Turin, Italy
We leave Tuscany with heavy hearts and larger stomachs, and head north towards the Alps. First though is a two night detour into Turin, where we are spending time with Kim's dad's cousins, who have lived in Turino for years. A three hour scenic tour into Turin, we arrive early, and had the day to spend prior to meeting Kim's relatives for what will be a very gracious and enjoyable visit to their city and home. So with an afternoon to spend in Turin, on a Sunday when the shops are all closed, what is a family to do?
Maybe check out the Roman gate and ruins about a 100 meters from our hotel…the Rome theme again. Naaaah, Rome's too young, so let's go to the Egyptian Museum! Hold on, you thought we were in Italy. We are, but Turin is home to one of Europe's best collection of Egyptian statutory and artifacts. A gentleman who was with Napoleon in Egypt, who later became general counsel in Egypt became a true Egyptologist, and shipped out thousands of items to Turin. Later additions to the collections made it a truly remarkable exhibit. I've been to the Louvre, the British museum, and others around the world, but his one was truly interesting, as it had a ton of stuff, and was very accessible. One VERY cool part ( no photo's allowed) is that there were COMPLETE tombs on display. Not king's tombs, that were plundered for their gold and jewels, but lesser officials, who were interred with wooden goods, clothing, furniture, toys, cookware, knives, etc. All were intact, and all showed once again that technology changes, time changes, locales change, but humanity really does not.
Another foot shot again (Kim in action once more, I think she misses shoe shopping, a favorite pastime for her):
Winemaking, another common theme across time, space and geographies:
Another cool statue shot. I had a bunch, as we WERE able to take pictures in the statue area, and the area had been redone by the museum and the Set Designer for movies such as The Aviator, so the lighting was VERY cool. There were dozens of statues, most in perfect condition, as they were just removed from the temple they were placed on the day before.
Here is another common them, one we have seen in every stop. Once again, history does not get eliminated, it just gets recycled.
On our second day, Kim's relatives brought is to an area outside of the city, where a palace belonging to the King of the City State lived. It was vast, and it's currently getting a few hundred millions of Euros pumped into the restoration. It was interesting to see a future tourist destination and a tourist area in progress!
Vast, empty, but will be worth a visit in three or four years…Off to the Alps!
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