The Shroud of Turin

La Sindone - the Shroud of Turin - is one of the most important Biblical artifacts and one of the biggest attractions in Turin. This piece of cloth is believed to be the shroud that covered Jesus's body in his tomb, and it is famous and important because it appears to have the image of Jesus transferred directly onto the cloth.

The Shroud is kept in this cathedral in the heart of Turin - the Duomo di San Giovanni Battista (Cathedral of Saint John the Baptist).

At the time I took this picture, the cathedral was closed, hence there are no people. But when we came back when it was open, there were several tour groups there. Tourism in Turin is not so big, but I imagine that this is a must-see for the tourists who do come here.

The inside of the church is not as architecturally spectacular as some of the other churches we have seen here, but it is filled with some great religious relics and artwork. The apse of the church has a trompe l'oeil painting on the back wall to give the illusion that the church is bigger than it really is. Now that I think of it, for a "cathedral," the church is actually relatively small.

The huge attractions are along the sides of the church. The walls are lined with alcoves, each ornately decorated and some of which contain relics.

The actual shroud is not publicly displayed, for reasons that are probably not difficult to figure out. It is kept in an ark that can be publicly viewed, but not photographed. The Shroud is only brought out by the pope himself for special occasions. I think there will be a public viewing next summer.

Instead, near the front of the church, they have a replica of the shroud on display, which just looks like a glowing box in this photo because of my camera's exposure and contrast settings or whatnot.

In this picture you can see the image on the Shroud. It's a little misaligned because it's actually two photos spliced together that aren't lined up correctly.

It's clear from the above picture that there is an image on the cloth, but it's hard to tell exactly what it is unless you take a look at the image's negative, which the church has on display right below the Shroud replica.

Today is my last day with internet access at home, so there will likely not be any updates over the weekend. Hopefully, I'll have something to write about at work next week before I finally head back to the US!

And before I close this entry, an odd anecdote from yesterday. On the way back from lunch, two carabinieri (military police) were going into the computer store for a reason we didn't catch. After they exited their car, one of them pretty much goes like "Hold on a sec! I think I forgot something..." when he casually reached into the car and casually pulled out a machine gun, which he casually draped over his shoulder before they casually walked into the store. The carabinieri were being really casual, so I guess nothing too bad was going on, but I guess they might feel a little naked without their machine guns!

Sights in Downtown Turin

I should start off this post by saying that the photos here were taken over the course of many different days and nights, so you'll find that the lighting is all different in many of the pictures.

The "downtown" area of Turin is the more historical area, and since cities tend to grow outwards, you get more modern as you go away from the downtown area. Over here, it seems like every intersection of two major streets is marked by some kind of monument, as is the case here, near the Porta Susa train station.

One of the main arteries of the city is Via Roma, which leads from the Porta Nuova train station to this entrance to the historical center. This street nowadays is completely lined with high-end shops. See the man standing on the fountain in this picture? He was getting ready for a photo of himself and gave us surprise after surprise. First, instead of standing in front of the fountain, he climbed into the fountain and waded through the water to get as close to the statue as he could. Then the second surprise was that while we assumed he went through the water because he was probably wearing shorts and sandals, it turned out that he was wearing pants and shoes! He must have really wanted to get close to that statue.

After walking farther along the road, we finally reach the Piazza Castello (Castle Square), where we can see the Palazzo Madama - the Queen's Palace, which is now open like many other palaces in general as a tourist attraction. I didn't go in, but Fernando and Kristen told me that it is very fancy like a palace.

Right by the Palazzo Madama is the Palazzo Reale (Royal Palace), which could be where the king might have lived. If you're wondering what's up with all these palaces, I should probably mention that before Italy was united, Turin was the capital of a major kingdom under the Duchy of Savoy. Perhaps more surprising, though, is that once Italy was united, they named Turin its first capital! It wasn't very long afterwards, however, that they moved the capital to Florence, and then finally Rome.

The only part of the Palazzo Reale that is open to the public is the inner courtyard, which has some Roman mythological statues, as well as these "arm" lamps,

which I got a kick out of because it reminded me of the 1946 French film La Belle et la Bête (Beauty and the Beast).

While walking around town more, we came across this statue, which we found particularly interesting because most of the statues here are in more of a classical style.

Tomorrow, I will write about the famous Shroud of Turin, which does indeed merit its own post. Right outside the cathedral in which the Shroud is kept is a mysterious brick structure. It turns out that this structure was once a city gate, called the Porte Palatine (Palatine Towers). Extending out of the gate are some remnants of the city wall, back before Turin started to expand more into what it is today. In front of the gate, you can see a statue of Caesar Augustus doing his trademark "point."

Tomorrrow: The Duomo di San Giovanni Battista and the Shroud of Turin

Stuff to Drink Here

Oh gosh, when I first started blogging about my stay in Italy with the hope that I'd be able to write every day that I could, I originally thought I would run out of things to write about. Then during my travels around Italy and France, I thought I would have too much to talk about. But now that I am done traveling (as I will be staying in Turin the rest of my time here), I am once again afraid that I might run out of things to blog about.

Actually, there are so many interesting things here that I probably will be able to have something to write about for the next 11 days (wow, it's almost time to go back home!). BUT, I will probably run out of photos to use!

But let's not waste today's entry. Let's talk about drinks! The non-alcoholic kind...

I'd have to say that other than coffee, the popular beverage here seems to be water - both regular and sparkling. It seems like everyone in the office has a bottle. But water is just water, so let's instead focus on drinks here that are different from the US. As I may have mentioned before at some point, high fructose corn syrup is basically non-existent here, and sweet non-diet drinks use sugar instead.

Here is a popular orange soda, which is very much like Orangina. Orangina is French, but over here in Italy they have the San Pellegrino orange soda, as well as Orangina-like Fanta. They also have Fanta that tastes like US orange soda though.

Look at the foil cap... how cute! Not all the cans have these, but I suppose it keeps the drinking surface clean.

At some point over the summer, they replaced the San Pellegrino orange soda in the vending machine at work with Fanta Zero. This diet soda is grapefruit flavored, and even though I am not personally a fan of neither grapefruit nor diet sodas, I'd have to say that this soda is actually kind of delicious.

As for my favorite drink here (other than coffee, of course), it would have to be the peach iced tea. It's probably the fact that they use real sugar here, but it tastes really different from how it does in the US. At first, I bought the tall 1.5 L bottles to drink at home.

But recently I bought a box of 0.5 L bottles so now I can bring peach iced teas to work!

The other drink that I have on a regular basis here is Coke, which tastes very similar in my opinion to the ones back at home.

Well that's all for today. For the next two days I'll be showing you some of the big sights to see in Turin, including the famous Shroud of Turin. Then this weekend, Fernando and I will be seeing more of the town, so hopefully I'll have more pictures to show and more to talk about!

The Tower and the Beach

The Eiffel Tower - La Tour Eiffel - is known everywhere as the symbol of France and is an engineering marvel. It towers over the Seine at 1063 feet tall and is still used today for broadcasting radio signals. Just like most other attractions in Paris, a large park lies in front of the Eiffel Tower.

The tower's iron lattice structure is simply amazing. Only when you get close to the tower do you realize that there is a lot more nothing than there is metal, but still the tower is as sturdy as a stone. In fact, engineers took note of the design and modeled future broadcasting towers after it because its lattice structure lowered wind resistance.

Underneath the tower, there are four entrances - one at each leg. Fernando and I waited in line about 45 minutes to take one of the entrances with the stairs, since the lines for the entrances with the elevators were at least twice as long.

There is a good amount of humor in the tower, such as fake elevator drivers (dummies attached to the front of the car), as well as this toy construction worker (or should we say daredevil?).

As the Eiffel Tower is really the only "skyscraper" in the city, the view of all sides of the city was unobstructed, even from halfway up. The only way for tourists to go to the top is through the elevator, but we figured that it would be nice enough halfway up with the shorter wait in line.

Across the river from the tower are the Trocadéro and Palais de Chaillot.

Here we can see a good portion of the more modern portion of the city, and a hot air balloon far in the background!

And more of the city... these pictures are great but it shouldn't be surprising that they're not nearly as good as the actual view. I can't even recognize any of the buildings here!

And now: the compulsory "Yay, I'm at the Eiffel Tower!" picture...

As we walked back across the park, an Iranian pro-Mousavi protest was just about to begin. Hopefully it remained peaceful, but Fernando and I made sure to get out of there just in case.

Back in the downtown area, it turns out that the Paris Plage (Paris Beach) was opening that day. Looks like we definitely chose a good weekend to visit! In this annual event, a road along the Seine is completely closed off to cars and turned into a beach. The first thing we saw, on the way to the beach was a street performer with the largest crowd I have ever seen for anything like this. Even the bridge and the ledge above were filled!

Now you may be wondering how they turn the road into a beach. Since it was the first day, they were still getting set up. In fact, I'm pretty sure the road was still open to cars earlier that afternoon. For the first day, they already had the palm trees and some attractions and cafés set up.

However, beaches are of course much nicer with sand, and they do indeed eventually cover the decks with sand. Now swimming in the Seine is illegal, perhaps because it is an artery for boats, but as I have mentioned earlier, Parisians just love to sit and relax. Already on the first night of the beach being open, the decks were crowded with groups of friends having picnics.

As we were returning home, the streets were finally beginning to light up, as the sun set really late that night (past 10PM). Paris is not the "City of Lights" for no reason!

On Sunday, Man-Yan, Amy, Fernando, and I went to the outskirts of town to try to get some free stuff from the Tour de France caravan, since the final stage was going into Paris that day. It turns out that at the particular section we were at, the caravan wasn't giving anything away. Well, at that point Fernando and I had to head home, since the last train from Paris to Turin leaves quite early at 3:25PM on Sundays, but Amy actually went over to the Champs-Elysées to catch the race (and try to get free stuff) and got to see Lance Armstrong up close! Fernando, Kristen, and I did see him before in Monaco, but he was fully-clad in his time trial helmet and skinsuit.

Well, this concludes all of my updates on my travels outside of Turin this summer. Unless we change our mind, Fernando and I plan to stay in town this weekend while Kristen is in Barcelona, and then the weekend after that I am going back to the States! This also makes me remember that while I have been showing a lot of stuff from all over Italy and France, I have not shown all too much from Turin! But don't worry, we have been going around town here, and the remainder of my posts during my stay here will be on things to see and do in Turin and Italian culture. Stay tuned!

Strolling Around Paris

Ah, Paris. The city of lights, the city of love, the city of stopping to smell the roses, and by all means a great city to walk around instead of taking the metro.

Just from walking around the streets downtown, you can absorb the air of Parisian life. The architecture is one-of-a-kind - the buildings are enormous, but not tall, and can always be identified as uniquely Parisian. There is a ton of open space, whether it is on the many parks around the city, or even on the streets, which are uniformly wide and are not plagued by claustrophobia-inducing skyscrapers. The streets are lively but never crowded.

Even the Jardin des Tuilleries, a public garden that connects the Louvre to the Place de la Concorde, which leads straight down the Champs-Elysées to the Arc de Triomphe, is clearly popular but not crowded. For Parisians, who must deal with constant tourist invasion, it still seems like finding a relaxing place to have a picnic is ultimately not a great challenge.

As Parisians really enjoy relaxing, a popular thing to do on the weekends, in addition to having picnics, is to just chill out in a park.

Now these parks can be found basically everywhere downtown. It seems like in front of every attraction is a park. The Jardin des Tuilleries, in particular, is probably the largest, and you can see that they have really turned it into a local hotspot.

The best thing about walking instead of taking the metro is that we can notice much more. In addition to seeing the lovely architecture, we see some curiosities such as this road-side gas pump. I don't think I actually saw any other gas stations during our stay, but this was cute!

Across the Seine river from the Louvre are Les Invalides, which was originally used by none other than Napoleon to house and treat soldiers. Today, it is home to several museums, as well as Napoleon's tomb, which is in the large dome. Here we can see the south entrance, which already looks like a large building in itself but is only a small part of Les Invalides. It's a little harder to see the rest of the building, which extends behind this entrance.

Sadly, because we were pressed for time during our stay in Paris, and because the museum was only open for less than two more hours anyway, we didn't go in. It was at this point, though, that we needed to use the bathroom, which leads me to another point.

Parisians have a little bit of a reputation of being rude to tourists, but who can blame them, especially when many tourists are rude themselves? However, they can in fact be very polite and helpful if you show a little bit of respect. Trying to speak as much French as you can always helps, as does adding simple polite phrases like s'il vous plait to whatever you're saying. It's really not that hard to get help as long as you know not to be another one of those annoying, thankless tourists.

Anyway, in this case, I asked the lady at the museum's information desk if there was a bathroom nearby (in polite French, of course). She asked if we had tickets, which we did not. But by simply acting cute and polite in saying no, I think she felt sorry enough to let us use their restrooms anyway. Somehow, I don't think "another one of those annoying, thankless tourists" would have gotten the same treatment.

Well, as I said, we didn't go inside, but we got to see the building's beautiful exterior, as well as the gardens that lie both in front and behind the building!

The Seine River and the views from it are gorgeous. A relatively clean river I think is always helpful for a city, and Paris is no exception. Thanks to some great planning back when the modern Paris was designed, trees line both the streets and the riverside. Down below, there are walkways and boats, some of which are actually cafés.

On the riverside opposite the Louvre is the Musée d'Orsay, which looks like it used to be a train station. This museum houses a large collection of French art. Wish we had time to take a look inside...

Farther east is an island in the middle of the Seine that is home to the famous Notre Dame cathedral. As I was taking pictures of the river and some bridges leading to the island, it turns out that boats were passing by at the same time. Seems like everybody wants to be in my photos. What luck!

In addition to Notre Dame, the island is also home to some huge administrative buildings, since after all, Paris is the capital of France. On the island is also a church called Sainte Chapelle that is tucked into some huge office but is supposedly much more gorgeous inside than Notre Dame. We didn't arrive on the island until around 9PM, which we didn't even realize because it was sunny as day outside. But arriving that late meant that we couldn't expect any of the attractions to be open, and indeed we didn't get to go inside either of the churches. Still, I was able to get the obligatory picture of Notre Dame's façade.

Tomorrow, we'll finish up the review of my stay in Paris with a little bit of this year's grand opening of the "Paris beach," along with some beautiful views of and from La Tour Eiffel!

Weird Paris Happenings and the Louvre

You know, for a relatively short stay in Paris, I have a lot to blog about, I suppose because it's Paris. And although I'm sure that many of you reading this have basically already seen everything in the picture's I'll be showing over the next few days, those pictures are still worth showing.

Anyway, while Kristen spent the weekend with her parents, Fernando and I went to Paris, where we stayed in Man-Yan's apartment. We basically only had one full day to do things, because the latest train on Sundays leaves at 3:25PM, but a lot of things (both exciting and weird) happened.

Let's start off with the weird. First, while we were at the Eiffel Tower, Fernando heard some ladies having a huge argument... in the bathroom! We wonder what they were fighting over to create such a scene at the toilettes. But wait, things get weirder later on!

After our long day, Fernando and I returned to the apartment. On the outer door to the courtyard, we heard some people inside and just thought it was some people having a chat. But once we opened the door, we realized that it was actually the police arresting some British guy. The British guy was handcuffed on the ground and was being very verbally belligerent, but let's just say the police got the best of him. When the guy yelled "I'm going to break your nose!" I was reminded a little bit of the "Black Knight" scene in Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Then, when he yelled "you think you're so smart???" the French policeman replied (in English) something like "well, I'm smarter than you!" ZING!

Anyway, Fernando and I kind of freaked out at first, but realized after a bit that it would be safe to walk around. Upstairs in the apartment, we looked into the situation a tiny bit. The only things we could notice were: the sound of glass shattering; the policemen later taking the man away and putting him into a truck, where the dumb guy was still being belligerent; and the policemen going up into the opposite half of the complex and checking in a room up there.

We think that everything in the apartment ended up okay, because the police never came back, but we still have no idea what the British guy was doing in the first place to get himself in trouble like that. On the way out the next morning, we noticed that the door to the opposite side of the complex had a broken pane of glass with what looked like a little bit of dried blood on it. Yuck. Anyway, I didn't find anything in the news about it so the guy was probably just causing trouble up in the room the police checked out.

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Moving on... our first destination yesterday was the Louvre, which is not too far from where we stayed. The museum's building is huge... along the Seine River, three bridges run to the Louvre. In the courtyard is the obligatory statue of Louis XIV.

And of course there is I.M. Pei's giant glass pyramid, which looks a little out of place, but which makes more sense to me once you see the lobby below.

I don't have any pictures of the lobby, sadly, but I thought it was nicely designed. The pyramid also looks nicer, I think, from the inside.

Every one of the many rooms in the museum had its own personality, and many of them were ornately covered in artwork from wall to ceiling to wall.

And the museum, having one of the largest and most valuable collections in the world, was home to many works of art you've probably seen, such as:

Liberty Leading the People

Winged Victory (Nike)

Venus de Milo

Virgin of the Rocks (there is also a copy in London)

Of course, the most famous work of art in the Louvre is the Mona Lisa. So many people see that specific painting that they have an actual roped-off line to get close enough to see it. We were able to get a picture reasonably close up, but I thought this one, showing a little bit of the crowd, was more appropriate.

Even amongst all the famous works, you still can't neglect the other pieces of art in the museum, of which there is a nearly endless supply. In fact, many of them are just as good or even better than the "famous" ones. This one was kind of creepy.

And here's a portrait of Frédéric Chopin! I think it's the same exact one that is on the cover of a book of Chopin piano pieces that I have.

This room here was INSANE. It had a series of 24 paintings by Peter Paul Rubens, which were actually made to be laid out in a room such as this. These paintings were commissioned by Marie de Medici and depict her life, from her birth to the adulthood of her children.

Our stay at the Louvre was exciting and refreshing. Sadly, we were pressed for time. Such a museum definitely requires more than one day to fully appreciate. Also, it may be surprising that the museum does not have a comprehensive collection of French Art! I did not see a single painting by Money, for example. All of the "famous" French paintings are across the river, at the Musee d'Orsay, which we sadly didn't have time to visit.

More from Paris over the next two or three days!

Cars!

For my milestone 50th post in this blog, let's check out some CARS!

Since we're in the "Motor City" of Italy, there is certainly no shortage of cars of all types. Turin is home to the Italian auto manufacturers Fiat, Lancia, and Alfa Romeo, and you definitely see a lot of these cars around town. Fiat, in particular, is by far the most popular car brand in Italy, as their cars are very economical and practical. Outside of Italy, though, it is almost unheard of.

If you're looking for a sexy Italian car, you'll want to avoid Fiat, whose cars are more ordinary and definitely geared to those who just want a car to drive places. Most of the Fiats are not too interesting, at least to look at. This one had a cute name though. Panda!

This Fiat, the Multipla, is what Fernando calls "the Beluga." It reminds me a little of the Honda Element in that it looks funny, but if you look inside, there is TONS of space.

And here is a cute older model of the Fiat Cinquecento, a tiny, tiny city car that is one of the most popular models.

After the Fiats, most of the cars here are Alfa Romeos, which are presumably more expensive as they are more showy. They can easily be recognized by the inverted triangular grill on the nose. This car must be both luxurious and powerful.

There are a handful of really nice Alfa Romeos in town, but most of the nice cars here are actually German - BMWs, Audis, and Mercedes. These two BMW two-seaters seem to have engines that are bigger than the rest of the car.

And occasionally, you'll see the top-of-the-line Ferrari, Lamborghini, or in this case, Maserati. We see this car parked on our street once in a while, as well as another black Maserati. We wonder if they are owned by the same person...

And while the trademark "Italian" color for a nice car like this is bright red, I have yet to see a car of that color! It seems like the people with the nice cars opt for more muted colors like black, white, gray, and dark blue. The cars I have seen with the crazy, bright colors have been "belugas."

I don't know why this truck has three wheels instead of four.

On our trip to Monaco, we saw an unsurprising number of nice cars. It's Monaco!

And back in Turin, here we are by a police station. Did you know that Italy has two police forces? The polizia are the civilian police that respond to medium-level tasks (the fire department takes care of the easier things), while the carabinieri are the military police who do the more dangerous things. The carabinieri don't bug people, but you definitely don't want to mess with them. They were originally created to take care of the mafia, so even though they walk around the streets sometimes armed with shotguns, I guess I do feel safer with them around.

Anyway, this truck here was parked outside a polizia station by a tourist attraction, but I would have thought that this is something that the carabinieri would use.