Haha, where? In Genoa?

Alright, so this is the first day in Italy!  I had four days in Italy total, and each one is most definitely getting a separate post because of how much we crammed into each of them.

Okay, so this is about Saturday the eighteenth.  We woke up in Torino, which some of you might recognize as the location of the Olympics.  For breakfast I had hazelnut yogurt (that's an interesting experience) and this orange carrot lemon juice that's actually really delicious.  I was trying to branch out a bit.  But the other thing that's in Torino (besides the Olympics which were actually way up on the Alps, some distance from the city) is the Shrine of Turin.  For those people who aren't up to date on Catholism (like me) the shrine of Turin is supposed to contain the shroud (sheet) in which Christ was wrapped in the tomb after he died and before he was resurrected.  But they only show the shroud like once a century or something, so when you go now you go and look at the pictures of the shroud that they've got.  That was in a pretty cool church, and then there was this castle looking thing in the square and whatever the family of power in the area's old mansion house as well.

This is me in front of the family's house.

Yeah, so Torino was pretty cool, but we didn't stay long.  We hit the road and headed out to Genoa.  We stopped on the way at an AutoGrill and got pasta!  These AutoGrills became our favorite, because you stop at a gas station and they've got pasta and fruit for relatively cheap prices.  Freaking delicious.

Anyway, we pulled into Genoa and went to the Maritime museum there.  Christopher Columbus is from Genoa (or Genova I suppose) and it's a major port there, which explains the presence of the Maritime Museum.  It was actually a really good museum.  I felt that it was a lot more informative than the one at Greenwich and that I learned a bunch about how ships worked at that time.  There was also this really neat display on the top floor all about immigrating from Italy to America through Ellis Island.  As I went to Ellis Island just a couple of summers ago, it was really interesting seeing what the Italians had to say about the process from the other side and compare the two.

After the Maritime Museum we walked over to the Aquarium.  The Aquarium was fairly cool, but definitely not the neatest thing that I've ever done.  The penguins were awesome though, and we could see them a lot better than the ones at the zoo.  Plus, I got to kiss a fish.

It's called a parrot fish.  And yes, there is definitely glass in the way.

The Aquarium was definitely a tourist attraction.  My mom says that it's supposed to be the third highest tourist attraction in Italy (after the Colosseum and the Roman Forum) but in all honesty I don't think it warrants that ranking.  But it was kind of neat to see signs written in five different languages.

Wait, so where's the way out?  Oh right, not in England.

Although a comment on the whole English thing.  You know how you can pick what language you want based on the flag of the country?  Well, when you're in Europe it's definitely the flag for the United Kingdom that means English.  Of course, I find myself pointing to it without a conscious thought.

Anyway, we left the museum and decided to go wander through some of the really cool streets in Genoa that were close to the port.  Old city you know.  It was pretty nifty, but the best part is that we got lost!  So fantastic, even if my mom was freaking out a little bit.  We ended up walking in the completely wrong direction and eventually Lorraine got directions from a man that spoke only Italian and French and seemed quite taken with her.  We got gelato on the way (daily occurrence whilst in Italy) from this really awesome shop in the middle of all the mess we were wandering through that the girl who worked there had just made, so so delicious, which kind of stood in for dinner, and ended up walking along/on top of the old wall that surrounded the city, which was pretty neat.  You could really see how the city's built in layers, because, as David pointed out, there's always a church or shops or another apartment building underneath the buildings you're walking past.

We got out of Genoa finally and hopped back in the car and drove down to Pisa.  There's nothing in Pisa but the leaning tower, which is actually a bell tower for this enormous church.  We hopped out and took pictures (yes I got the typical leaning against the tower, it's not on my camera).

That's the tower in the background.  Our camera was having trouble focusing in the dark.

It just so happens though that while we were there the church/cathedral was just about to start mass.  So there were these hordes of people going into the other side of the church, all carrying their candles to go in for evening mass.  It was really neat, and definitely not something that you'd see in normal tourist hours.

After that we hopped back in the car, drove for a couple more hours or something like that and checked into our hotel in Florence.