Torino - Genova

One week after seeing Northern Ireland with Jess, I took the last bit of my holiday time to see Andre in his ancestral homeland for a few days. We met up in Turin in the middle of the night, because of a terribly delayed flight into Italy on Ryanair. I checked in at our hostel at around 11:30 at night, without having dinner yet and woke Ghione just to say I arrived. I then headed out into the city to find some dinner until about 1:30am to settle the day's worth of hunger.

The following day, we said a more coherent hello to each other and headed out into the city. We caught a nice view of the city from the hills nearby the hostel - the Mole Antonelliana (pronounced moleh...with a bit of Italian flair) as the main focus with the Alps in the background. Haphazardly, we made our way towards it to see it up close and explore the city at the same time. After a nice long circle route with more catching up with each other than touristy sight-seeing, we reached the Mole. It looks like a church but it has been converted to a cinema museum. We decided to have a look. It was really worth it, the inside was full of activity - a nice break from just looking at the inside of a church which has become the usual in most European cities. In Dublin however most of the churches have been converted to lighting shops or pubs. Anyhow, we spent a while here then checked out the Royal Gardens from a closed fence and walked around for most of the remaining day.

The following day, we caught an early train to head down to Genoa (Genova). Before coming here, I was trying to place our hostel on google maps. You have to see this. It's quite a contrast to Turin's gridded map. In Genova, Ghione and I explored the old medieval town and later saw the famous La Lanterna (lighthouse). Architect Renzo Piano has redeveloped the main harbour, including a tensile tent (which was closed when we were there) as well as a floating butterfly bubble. The city is totally focused inward on its historical port, where Christopher Columbus is supposedly born. The harbour is filled with massive ferries and cruise ships. We visited the aquarium there as well which is known as the largest in Europe.

We caught a lot of sights together, but it was really nice to catch up with the old mountebank again. Our next proposed rendezvous will be in Thailand circa 2008.