Monday, 26 June, 2017 – Weather cool and wet

First here is Capo’s advertisement for the day:

“We head off to the charming (it’s far better than charming!) old world city of Torino, with elegant boulevards, art galleries, porticos and nouveau café’s. This is where slow food started. Once the capitol of Italy, and the 15th century Kingdom of Savoy it’s also where aperitivi & cocktails started. We indulge in a degustation lunch at the hip Tre’ Galli ristoranti, with our table in a tiny piazza. Then we meet up late afternoon at the world’s first cocktail bar – a fabulous circa 1854 surprise!”

Yes, we are going to Turin today. We hop on the bus relatively early and make the long drive to Turin. It is a great looking city.

We take a long, long walk to a meeting place.

There is a fair bit of time for wandering – read shopping. I spend most of that time sitting in a mall.

Then it is time for lunch at Tre Galli. We have two tables outside under umbrellas, nice setting.

Then some things start to go wrong. Chris Love, who had been under the weather a bit, took one look at the steak tartare and felt really sick. He went upstairs for a rest and eventually caught a taxi back to home base.

Then it started raining. It was supposed to just be a summer shower according to the waitress but it was not lasting and getting worse most of the day. People at the end of our table are getting wet. Shuffling of seats and tables does not really help. Eventually Nola moves to a small table inside. Eric moves down there too. Any way the food comes.

Tony and Eileen had never had raw meat or octopus before. Thus the meal was challenging for them but they did OK.

We took the long walk back to the meeting place. Of course it was in pouring rain and none of us were prepared with it. I was in a school with Eric and Lola. Eric stopped in a pen shop, a watch shop, a smoke shop, a t-shirt shop, etc before I gave up and went to the meeting place.

We all get to the meeting place but two girls did not show up until much very late. Ben goes looking for them and all in all we are much later than expected to get to our next stop. Capo leads us through and across, again in the pouring rain – especially when we walk under some scaffolding. There is lots of lightning and thunder with a couple blasts very near the glass dome of our building, very loud.

We finally arrive at the famous bar where the Martini was invented.

We all order unique drinks from the cocktail list.

Then it is the long, long walk back to the bus in the pouring rain. Then the long drive back to home base. When we get there I am slowly unpeeling the wet clothes when Julie says to come quick as there is to be a tour of the wine cellar.

We were supposed to have picked up pizzas for the night’s supper but somehow a vote was taken without considering those opposed to that notion, and many of us are quite disappointed. As a result, we are back at the Hotel with the kitchen closed. Sweet Jane brings out some cold cuts that along with the guys’ salami and our individual wines brings us some comfort. Thus ends a very busy day.

A lot of us would have liked to have spent more time in Turin. We did not even consider the shroud. Some thought that maybe our next destination could have been swapped out for 3 nights in Turin. We may try to go there again in the future.