Yes I know it is a predictable title but how can I resist it!  What was also fairly predictable was that Chelsea would end up being drawn against one of our former managers in Claudio Ranieri of Juventus.  But at least it meant I would get to visit Turin, or Torino to the locals, and tick another major European venue off my list.  In theory this is the European game where you have ages to book up but with the vagaries of what other people could or could not do it all got a bit tight.  I had opted to go on a one-night trip with Flight Options going out on the Monday and straight back after the game.  But despite giving them deposit details things were strangely quiet when in mid-February they rang up and said they were only doing a day trip.  So Clive opted for that but I wanted a proper trip this time around.  Flight Options had tipped me off about decent prices with Ryanair from Stansted and this was a good tip and I was soon booked going out Monday evening and coming back on Thursday.  So I ended up with three nights for the price of their trip, which sort of explains why they couldn’t fill it up!  I also didn’t take off any more time from work than planned as I went in on the Monday and in again on the way home on Thursday!

Stansted isn’t my favourite airport but not too hard to get to and even the alarm going off in the airport on arrival wasn’t causing any problems.  Usual waiting around but then just as I was getting ready to board I spotted my mate Kevin, wifeless on this trip.  In fact there were quite a few familiar faces on the plane.  We left and arrived pretty much on time though I still cannot fathom what cheap airlines gain by not assigning seats.  We thought we knew what we were doing when we got there as the train service from the airport stops ridiculously early we would be getting a bus.  First off we couldn’t find the place to get a ticket so decided the extra 50 cents for paying on board would have to be borne.  Then we couldn’t find the bus stop but did find the bus round the corner and the sympathetic driver let us on board.  The stop was blindingly obvious once you knew where it was, though obscured by a pillar.  A simple journey into town and then we went our separate ways to our hotels.  My hotel was right by the station though as they were digging up the road I didn’t find the quickest way first time.  So I checked in and sorted myself out before going to bed.

So I was up reasonably early to look out the hotel window at a bright blue sky and a great view of the snow topped Alps.  I went for a general wander around with the aim of finding tourist information and getting one of their cards for transport and visiting sites.  Easier said than done as the one at the station seemed to have disappeared in the building works and the one in the central square just wasn’t there on first look.  I did find the Juventus club shop with a big queue of home fans outside before finally finding the tourist information where the woman who said she could speak English struggled to explain the ins and outs of the tourist card.  I decided to find the Mole Antonelliana, which is the name of that building with the large spike on top, as it houses the film museum and I wanted to find out if the Torino card worked there.  Just round the corner from there I get a text from Clive and we were literally just 100 yards away from each other, small world.  So having found a card would work I went back and got a two-day version from someone with much better English before we went to the mole and queued for the lift.  We also got a message from Andy that he had arrived but he didn’t sound very interested in sightseeing so we agreed to meet later.  The lift goes straight up inside the building and is glass so not for everyone’s taste but it didn’t bother me.  From the top you can see pretty much all of Torino though it is quite hard to pick out some landmarks, like either of the football grounds.  But you can see up to the basilica at Superga, of which more later, as well as various Alps.  What we thought might be Mont Blanc turned out to be something called Monte Viso.  We descended and had a look around the museum that was largely full of younger people.  It has a good array of cinema displays and was hosting a Rudolph Valentino exhibition.  They seem pretty unconcerned about what the younger patrons can see as the horror film clip section included one of the more notorious scenes from The Exorcist amongst much gore.  On the whole it was an enjoyable visit and I planned to return.

We then met up with Andy and after an aimless wander found one of the restaurants recommended in my guidebook and literally just managed to get the last order before they shut for the afternoon.  The waiter actually said to us, pizza only and you have twenty seconds to order it!  Very politely said though!  Andy then went back to his hotel, which was near the ground, and we did some more wandering around.  We had worked out we could get a tram to the Olympic stadium and it was a straight run from next to the train station.  We were early but wanted to hunt for souvenirs, as we hadn’t got in the shop.  Quite a few stalls but expensive though Clive did succumb to buying a pendant.  No programmes, just free newspapers with little content.  There were a lot of Juventus fans arriving by coach and this plus the queues at the club shop reminded me of certain red shirted northern teams that are supported from all over rather than by the locals (there’s a blue-shirted southern team fast going that way... – cheeky ed).  Inside the ground was fairly compact but it still seems odd that they are playing here whilst they reduce the size of their normal home ground.  Who else willingly makes a ground smaller if they claim to be a big team!  Anyway qualification was achieved though it was a bit harder than it should have been.  There was a nice touch at the end when the Chelsea fans sang the Tiago song to him, which he seemed to appreciate.  I’d always thought he should have hung in there and stayed at Chelsea, as he is a good player.  Anyway we were not kept in very long by Italian standards and outside Clive got his coach to the airport.  Andy and I avoided the rubbishy local buses as he wanted to walk to his hotel and I wanted the tram.  It was pretty quiet walking round the ground to get to the right place.  After a short wait I got the tram to be overtaken ten minutes later by a fleet of buses packed solid with Chelsea fans.  The police then stopped them outside the station so my tram had to end its route early and I got to bump into some friends who had had a sardine like ride!

My last full day was supposed to be well planned but didn’t quite work out right.  It seemed to take far to long to work out the best way back to the airport the following day but then the tram and bus numbers on some routes appear to be interchangeable as they go round digging up roads so trams can’t go down them.  The metro is so short you’re on and off in a few minutes and bizarrely isn’t included in the Torino card, though it is cheap.  Some general looking around plus a visit to the now empty, and surprisingly small, Juventus shop and most of the morning had gone.  My afternoon plan was to go up to Superga partly as homage to the great Torino team of the 1940s who perished there in an aeroplane crash.  Having got a bus full of Italian teenagers to the right place to get the old railway up the very steep hill I found it was closed and it was replaced by a bus, I should have guessed.  The bus ride was a bit like the bit on the coach at the end of The Italian Job as there were some tricky curves but no gold bullion to throw us off balance.  Once up there it is pretty impressive both as a building and as a view that is ten times the one from the city centre.  Unfortunately being a Wednesday you couldn’t go up the building to the top.  However I could go on the guided tour of the crypt.  On my own this would have been twenty minutes at the outside.  With our Italian guide it was over double that and I basically understood nothing of what he said as it was all in Italian.  I had a two sheet English version of the paper guide; he had a small novel about all the dukes and kings buried there.  It was also pretty cold.

Back outside I found that pretty much everything else was closed or not where it said it was, including a strange absence of refreshments on sale.  So I wandered around trying to get the best views of the Alps and also found the monument to the Torino team, which is hidden round the back with no obvious signs pointing the way!  After getting the bus back down I then got overcome by the vagaries of the local transport.  I thought I was getting a tram and could see it sitting down the road but it never moved.  So I got a bus which I then decided to get off when stuck in traffic only to finds it was a temporary problem and it soon passed me as I walked.  I waited at a tram stop and three completely empty trams went past much to the disgust of the locals.  So after walking a couple of miles I was back at the Mole for a second visit.  When I entered they were very insistent that I should go up the lift first and it took some discussion to establish I’d done that yesterday and just wanted the museum.  I then got caught out by thinking I could spend ten minutes in the souvenir shop only to find it shut before the museum, as did the café!  So by now I was tired and starving so darted back to my hotel.  I then picked another restaurant from my guidebook and hit lucky again.  It was strangely a religious themed restaurant with the waiter wearing a dog collar.  But the food was good and it did sort of explain the comment in the book about religious orders eating well.

Back at my hotel I found that Roma were still playing Arsenal but couldn’t find the channel.  I then found it but after ten minutes realised this was another bit of Italian Sky showing the game again from the start even though it hadn’t finished yet.  Eventually I tracked down a channel in time to see the penalty shout out which Roma contrived to lose though it must be said both goalkeepers were pretty useless at trying to save shots.

The next morning there wasn’t time to do anything before leaving and I did realise that I’d left it too late to get a cheap Torino shirt from the stalls near my hotel, as they didn’t open early enough!  So just back to the airport and a long journey surrounded by annoying Italian teenagers who couldn’t sit still or be quiet! 

And the next round I don’t even get to go abroad!!

PS:  you really did notice the weak pound with it being almost one for one with the Euro!