Monday, June 11, 2018

Italy 2018 - Four seasons in one day

Today started off cool and dry, although humid. The weather forecast predicted rain, which made today a good day to visit a museum ... not any museum, but the renowned Egyptian Museum. On the way to the museum, it started raining: not heavily, but that annoying rain which gets one wet with little effort. I don't know how much effect the rain had on other people, but the museum was quite full.

As per the cinema museum, we were issued with multimedia players and headphones; unlike the cinema museum where the players synchronised with each station, here the players were totally unsynchronised. It took me some time to figure out how I could play commentary which was connected to the room in which I stood at any given time. So we wandered from room to room, reading the captions and trying to understand what we were seeing.

Maybe the above doesn't sound very enthusiastic, but the exhibits themselves were excellent; possibly the best was saved for the end, the so-called Kings' Gallery, which had statues of Rameses II, at least ten of Sekhmet, as well as others. An excellent way to finish one's visit. The two statues outside of the building (see above) are also of Sekhmet; for some reason, there are hundreds of statues of this goddess.

After the museum, it was time for lunch; today we slummed a little and ate in McDonalds, which is on Piazza Castello. From there, we crossed the piazza and went into Palazzo Madama, which wasn't exactly what we were expecting. The museum has mainly medieval pictures and pottery, along with a garden. As it happened, we met two of the gardeners who were working at the time, and my wife had a learned discussion with them.

From the Palazzo, we walked a little way along Via Garibaldi until we came to the Juventus store, where we bought a jacket for our son. The prices in the store are outrageous, but then the prices of mementos in the Egyptian Museum were also very high. On the subject of prices, we have been trying to find a baseball hat in Turino; the first that we found was from the opposing club, Torino FC, a snip at only €20! The baseball hats in the Juventus store were priced at €32, whereas those which we found yesterday in a shop called 'Comte of Florence' was selling hats at €35. Needless to say, we have yet to buy a baseball hat; we are hoping to find one at the airport.

This business with hats epitomises something which we have noticed about Torino: there are extremely few foreign tourists here, and so there are very few shops (if any) selling tourist tat, and everyone speaks Italian. Sometimes this can be problematic (e.g. in McDonalds) and sometimes not. At least the hop on/off buses have commentaries in several languages; the Egyptian and Cinema museums have every caption in Italian and English.

Something else which I have not mentioned here: most Italians, even teenagers, smoke most enthusiastically,  which is exceedingly annoying. Many people in Pisa ride bicycles - because it's flat; at first I didn't see any bicyclists in Torino, but they were out in force over the weekend.

After the Juventus store, we walked home along Via Lagrange until we came to the Kazanova store; I describe this shop as quintessential Italian - the goods are beautifully designed and arrayed in the shop and most are essentially useless. The triumph of form over function! Fortunately, many of the items are very cheap so we managed to pick up a few items.

Why is this blog entitled 'Four seasons in one day'? Because the day started off dry and cold (autumn), then it rained (spring); after lunch it was fairly warm (26 °C) and we've just had a thunderstorm and rain (at 9pm). 

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