il Salone del Gusto

Today I went to the annual food fair "Salone del Gusto" here in Torino. It was 20 euro, but you got to try like a million different kind of food, mostly italian, but also other european specialities. We were there for about 4 hours and by the end of it we were bursting full and tired. I tried fondue from Switzerland for the first time, it was soo good. We also tried a crap load of olive oil. They were the best! I've never tasted olive oil so fresh and crisp. Lauren and I both ended up getting a bottle each, for 8 euro, pretty good price I think. We tried wine, hams, lots and lots of cheese (by the end I was pretty tired of cheese), chocolate, and just random qualify foods.

Torino thus far..

So school started on Monday, so I feel like my life here is becoming more settled down. There are about 40 students in our program, and all are from different parts of the world with a good percentages of them from China, and 8 from Italia. Everyone seemed very accomplished, but are all also very nice and friendly. On Monday the school coordinator-type-person took us to a self-service chain restaurant called Brek. I had some mushroom lasagne, which I didn't like that much. After school Lynn and I went to Carrefour (again!) to stock up our fridge and my yogurt supply. We ate dinner in the shared kitchen downstairs and were later joined by the two Italian boys that live across the hall from me. We ended up spending about 2 hours just sitting with them trying to learn Italian and teach English to one of the boys. They were really nice and funny.

Today after class Lauren, Lynn and I went out to aperitivo with the Italian students in our class, and at the end of it, we all decided that we would meet at 10pm at Piazza Vittorio. One of the Italian girl Sara picked me up in her car. We hung out at this really cheap bar for the majority of the night before heading out to this big party for the law students at this huge club. It was actually a lot of fun, I was surprised at the number of people that came out on a wednesday night.

Turin weekend

This weekend was rather uneventful for the most part. Yesterday evening I met up with a friend Matteo who I've been talking to for about two years on msn. We went to the Olympic Village to meet up with his other friends. They cooked pasta in the dormitory kitchen and it was delicious. We had just tortellini with tomato sauce, but somehow it just tasted very authentic Italian. I also learn that when you cook pasta with canned sauce there is no need to heat the sauce separately. All you need to do is to pour the sauce in hot pasta. We also had some pizza in a pizzeria near the residence, and it was soo good too. I really do think Italian food is the best in the world, just simple and earthy. We sat around a bit to wait for more people before we head out to Piazza Vittorio (a popular student hangout area). It's really strange to me that Italians just like to hang around outside in the piazza and leaving so many seats free in the club. In SF, all the seats are usually occupied and no one hangs out outside the club.

Random post

This post is unrelated to my trip, but I just want to record my newly updated top 10 footballers.

1. Sergio Ramos (Spain/Real Madrid)
2. David Silva (Spain/Valencia)
3. Cesc Fabregas (Spain/Arsenal)
4. Iker Casillas (Spain/Real Madrid)
5. Fernando Torres (Spain/Liverpool)
6. Fernando Gago (Argentina/Real Madrid)
7. Fabio Cannavaro (Italy/ Real Madrid)
8. Michael Ballack (Germany/Chelsea)
9. David Villa (Spain/Valencia)
10. John Terry (England/Chelsea)

Top 25 in no particular order:
Kaka (Brazil/AC Milan)
Owen Hargreaves (Englans/Manchester United)
Andrea Pirlo (Italy/AC Milan)
Yoann Gourcuff (France/Bordeaux)
Robin Van Persie (Netherlands/Arsenal)

Rafael Van der vaart (Netherlands/Arsenal)
Bojan Krkic (Spain/Barcelona)
Carles Puyol (Spain/Barcelona)
Mata (Spain/Valencia)
Frank Lampard (England/Chelsea)

Lukas Podolski (Germany/Bayern Munich)
Higuain (Argentina/Real Madrid)
Milan Baros (Czech/Galatasaray)
Petr Cech (Czech/Chelsea)
Philipp Degen (Switzerland/Liverpool)
Xabi Alonso (Spain/Liverpool)

First real rain...

It's raining semi-hard now in Turin and that destroyed my plan to go to Eataly. Even though I already had a nice big lunch with all my buys from Carrefour yesterday I wanted to check out Eataly's market. I'm not exactly sure what Eataly is, but it seems to be a very cool place where there is a big supermarket, and various restaurants where the chefs cook in front of you. Check out the link and see for yourself. My favorite thing so far in Turin is going to Carrefour, I went twice already in the past 2 days. I love huge supermarkets and just trying their food. I still miss Spain's market more though because they have a huge selection of yogurts and are much cheaper than Italy. I have a medium size fridge outside my room which I share with the two boys across from me. All I have in the fridge is different kinds of yoguts! I love yogurts, especially yogurt drinks.

Yesterday I went shopping around the Porta Nuova train station. I love that area, it has so many shops, chain and local. I bought a Harry Potter 5 DVD because I want to learn Italian through watching it in Italian and Italian subtitle. I watched about 10 minutes of it, and I understood about 80% of it, so I think my Italian has improved. Also yesterday my non-existant roommate showed up. Apparently she lives with her boyfriend and only comes to check up her room once a week or so. She spoke no English, so in my broken Italian we had a nice chat.

Ok, some random pictures..


Beautiful Olympic Village Port in Barcelona.. just minutes before the rain poured on us.

Gaudi park, they look like candy house to me.
Our first supermarket shopping experience in Spain. We walked into this huge supermarket near Camp Nou and had a great lunch outside the market. I downed a cup of flan in 2 seconds.

Torino + Photos

Today I walked and bussed around Turin on my own. I first went to the Stadio Olimpico where Juventus plays. It's a very nice stadium, but too bad the ticket for the CL game against Real Madrid is sold out so I can't see Sergio Ramos. I'm so sad for that. Then I went to Ikea to get some light bulbs to brighten up my room. It's better now but still not that great. I also went to Carrefour which is in the same plaza. I love Carrefour, I remember going to them in Taiwan, but there aren't any in America. I'm so happy I found it because all the "supermarket" nearby are so tiny and pricey. So from now on I will only shop for food at Carrefour. The one I went to today is actually quite far with a bit of walking, but I found another one much closer and with much less walking. I will go and check it out tomorrow.

Ok... now go on to the much delayed photo post. I'm the least photogenic person in the world, so I prefer not to put too many of myself up. (Lulu can attest to that)



Our travel journals, I was better than Lulu at keeping it.
Random street in Milan.

Lulu and fake Raul (Lorenzo) sipping Pina Colada.
Typical Italian breakfast Lorenzo took us to near the Duomo in Milan.

Looking through the different flavors of gelatos, the ones in Venice weren't that great.
I'm so amazed at my first football jersey stand, but I got used to it soon...
Arriving in Barcelona, trying to figure out the map, soon after this picture Lulu took over that job for the rest of the trip.. and for good reasons.
Chocolate con churro... not that great, this was our first one, but we tried again at the most famous store in Madrid, still not good.
Camp Nou... we saw Puyol and Valdez!!!!It's difficult to upload photos because they take forever, so I'll do the rest somee other time....all 2000 of them..

Arriverderci Lulu

Today I dropped off Lulu at the bus station that will take her to Malpensa airport. It was a bit sad for me to see her leave because we've been with each other 24 hours a day for a whole month, but I'm also very excited that my 2 months of studying will start soon so I'm closer to going home. Poor Lulu is spending internet and food-less hours at the hotel right now before she can get on the plane at 6 am.

I spent the rest of the evening going online and doing nothing. Tomorrow I will go to Ikea to get some lighting in here since its' a bit dark. I'm excited to explore Turin, but I hope I will meet some friends soon otherwise it's pretty bored in the room after dark.

Torino!!

I'm finally in Turin again and I have housing!!! It's a very nice loft double room with a non-existant roommate which is great for me. I have internet all I want too, so I'm super excited. I will update more after I unpack and settle down.

Endo

The month long trip has finally come to an end. Tonight is our last night in Rome and also last night of traveling. We get in to Torino early afternoon tomorrow and hopefully my housing situation will be set. We went to Napoli today, it was such an interesting city, and I really enjoyed my 5 hours there. I didnt want to be like other tourists that never go south past rome, so we decided to give Napoli a try, definitely eye opening. I will try to write more when internet is free. ciao for now.

Roma

We spent the whole day in the vatican city today. i couldnt find the birth stone necklace in the store i got from 7 years ago, but i got vatican bracelets as well as a birthstone cross necklace. we waited in line for 45 minutes just to climb up the basilica di san pietro, but i guess the view was worth the wait. I remember 7 years ago the last pic i had of italy was from top of the basilica because everything else got exposed. tonight we are going to a night tour of rome organized by our hostel, i hope it will be much fun. I think of all the cities we visited in italy so far i like rome the best, there seems to have most to do and see. the weather is scorching hot compared to the other parts of the italy we went to. we have to sightsee more tomorrow and sunday, but on monday we will go to naples to eat the famous pizza.

Last stop...ROME

ok, we are leaving Florence in a few minutes, and heading towards our last stop, Rome. Yesterday we went to see a event at the Fiorentina stadium. The former famous players from Fiorentina and AC Milan played a charity game. I saw Roberto Baggio, Paolo Maldini, Ronaldihno, and best of all we were like 2 feet away from the Italian National Football team. We saw Cannavaro for the second time, it was so great. I hope for Rome to redeem my trip.

Love and Hate for Torino

We arrived in Torino today and the situation with the girl who is supposed to rent me a room did not go smoothly at all and that is why we are in a hotel instead of her apartment. I dont know what is going to happen anymore, but thankfully Lorenzo is being so helpful. Tomorrow we start out tour dell'italia by going first to Cinque Terre for 2 days before heading to Florence for 4 and Rome for 5 days. I am just going to take it one day at a time, and one thing at a time otherwise this is totally stressing me out because I cannot plan anything. I do like Torino though despite the epic failure of my housing situation. THe city is so much cleaner and prettier than Milan, and things seem to be a bit cheaper. After we checked in our hotel we walked around to explore the city a bit and saw a couple of Palermo players, but we didnt know their names, so I am going to check now before my internet time runs out. ciao

Milano

This is our second day back in Milan, tomorrow we will head to Turin and move my stuff in if all goes smoothly (something I have stopped counting on). I'm very happy to find the Euro slumped so low against the dollar! 1.39! well, not that much difference from 1.40, but still.. in the 3's. I'll try to find a ATM when we go out to dinner today.

I can't say I'm impressed with Milan. I have forgotten what the other parts of Italy are like, but Milan is definitely pretentious, dirty, unfriendly and too-fast pace. Spain was so much cleaner and prettier, foreigner friendly in my opinion. I miss Madrid, I know I will be saying this a lot more times, and I think I left a piece of my heart in Madrid--home of beautiful Sergio Ramos whom I didn't see... oh well. I hope Turin will be different than Milan.

Bye bye Spain

We´re leaving Spain in about 3 hours. I can´t say I´m that impressed with Spain, except Madrid, which I love. Four days in Valencia went by quickly which I am glad. Two more weeks of traveling in Italy, then it´s school time. Will update more later, sorry about not posting too many pictures because the computers here do not have memory card reader so I can´t upload picture, but hopefully I will soon.