French Alps and Ballin

French Alps and Ballin
Sunday, July 19, 2009
2:19 PM
I had told Carlo that I wanted to get up to the Alps so his family got in the car and his Dad drove us up. Turin is at the base of the Alps (hence the Winter Olympics in '06) so it was a pretty quick drive, probably about 20 minutes or so before we were climbing. We drove through a couple small mountain towns and reached Lac du Mont Cenis which was a beautiful lake.



There was a small market there where Carlo's mom bought a lot of Cheese, and we took a short walk down to the lake which was so blue it looked like someone had put food coloring in it. We finished off the afternoon turned to evening with delicious crepes at a restaurant overlooking the lake.



Once we were back into Turin we ate a very quick dinner as we were late for a 10PM basketball game. We hit a park with lights and played some 3-on-3. I've never played on European courts so at first the strange lines threw me off, then a few of the customs were interesting too. During a shoot around there is no 'change' and during a game the ball is taken out wherever it goes out rather than at the top of the key. The fact that Italians grow up playing soccer and not basketball was evident as I was able to ball pretty hard.

Chillaxing

Chillaxing
Saturday, July 18, 2009
1:38 PM
Carlo has a pretty rough project he's been working on but he kept getting bad code from his group members so it kept us quasi-house bound. This was good for me because I was still lagged from a lack of sleep in Barcelona. We played quite a bit of FIFA in which I had my ass handed to be consistently. But, we also played 2K9 in which I showed him the superiority of Andrea Bargnani by averaging 50+.



Around midnight we headed downtown to grab a drink. It had been raining Friday night so the crowds were down a bit but Saturday was definitely buzzing. In the main square all the bars are open to the street so people walk freely in and out of them and spend most of their time talking and drinking outside. Down by the banks of the river the more clubby places have DJ's spinning outside and the music is bad. It was not an issue of it being eurotrash techno, it was an issue of it being shitty hip hop and random ass alt-rock. I was told that "Italians don't care at all about a song, they like every song if they are drinking" as a cartoon theme song came on over the speakers and everyone proceeded to rage.

Torino

Torino
Friday, July 17, 2009
3:00 PM
Once I got some rest, I met up with Stef and his girlfriend Carlotta. We went downtown and saw the sights. The entire area was gorgeous with tons of history. Among the sights were the banks of the River Po where all the summer clubs are. The controversial 'Shroud of Turin' which is the blanket that was laid on Jesus at his death. We saw a reproduction because the shroud is only shown every 5 or 10 years.



Once we got back we had dinner which started a string of many multi-course meals. Carlo's parents are from Southern Italy where the food is amazing and since I'm a guest I'm being fed with extra attention. I was told that if I did not say no, or that something was bad, it would be bad for me. The problem is that everything is delicious, and as a result I've got a stomach ache.

Giorno to Turin

Giorno to Turin
Friday, July 17, 2009
6:30 AM
Although I had heard an amazing amount of horror stories concerning RyanAir my flight was painless. The only issue was that the airport was roughly an hour outside of Barcelona which made for a lengthy bus ride at 4AM. Carlo picked me up from the airport in Turin and I crashed out promptly when I got to his house.

La Sagrada

La Sagrada
Thursday, July 16, 2009
10:00 PM
I took a long walk from the Hostel to drop off my bags at Anna's apartment. From there we cruised down to La Sagrada Familia, a cathedral that has been under construction for over 100 years, which was as impressive as it looked in pictures. Then we went to dinner at a place that she frequented and met with the crew from the beach and also Joan, a native Catalan, and Oscar who was from Puerto Vallarta by way of London who was living in Barcelona. Dinner was excellent and the place was packed even at 11PM. After dinner we cruised down to a fairly novel bar, Dow Jones, which had its drink prices rise and fall based on the amount bought, and on occasion had 'crashes' where every drink price went down considerably. After that I got my bags and started my trek to Turin.