Turin, minus the Shroud

The trip to Turin started at 8am sharp. During my 17 day vacation, I had been looking forward to these two days in Italy - a place I've always wanted to visit. I slept through most of the 3 hour car ride, waking at the most opportune times: to see the Vanoise Mountains National Park, at each of the 6 toll booths along the way (it's expensive to drive the highways of Europe!), and upon arrival at the city itself.
I had expected Turin to be a medium sized, polluted, industrial city. I was ultimately surprised to see that it was a gorgeous expanse of Italian architecture, full of trees and statues. The streets were lined with beautiful boutiques, marble columns and archways, and people dressed to the nines. The city was vibrant, alive, and the people were the same.
We started at Via Roma, a large street lined with stores like Cartier, Louis Vuitton, Giorgio Armani, Chanel - my jaw dropped at the prices in the windows. There must be quite a wealthy population living in Turin.
At lunchtime we feasted on typical Italian fare - pasta! I went straight for the gnocchi, of course. We topped lunch off with an ice cream cone later on, in gourmet flavours like 'tiramisu', and 'cantaloupe'.
Over the two days, we visited a succession of museums, and other attractions in the city. The first museum displayed Egyptian wares: mummies, hyroglyphs, sarcophagus', and papyrus scrolls. The next was the Museum of Cinema, and is also the tallest museum in the world, due to it's observation tower where I saw over all of Turin and took many photos. The musuem had interactive displays of the history of film and projection, as well as stations set up to honour each type of film. The center of the building had no less than 100 lounge chairs with built in speakers to allow visiters to watch the enormous screens above, which displayed classic moments in film. After, we went to the Museum of Natural History, which had an exhibition on Inuits. I believe this was in place for the Olympics, because the next host city is Vancouver, and so this was like a tribute to Canada.
We finished off the last day by going shopping! Of course, we skipped going on Via Roma to shop - I personally didn't have the 500€ for a pen at Cartier. Instead we winded our way through the streets, visiting boutiques, and best of all - a marketplace.
This market takes place everyday, and is the biggest one I've ever seen. It had clothes, cheese, vegetables, fruit, jewelery, bread, meat...everything. The venders shouted from their stalls, advertising their goods. My host mom haggled in Italian (she takes a course for work, and can speak Italian now) and we all waited as she made friends with half of the people there.
I left in love with Italy, in love with Turin, in love with the Italian people. It was an amazing trip. With one exception. The Shroud of Turin, the famous cloth Jesus was buried in, and his image was transfered onto, was not displayed. At the church where the Shroud is held, only a photocopied image is available for the public to see. The real thing is hidden from the public. What a disappointment!
Nevertheless, I highly recommend Turin...just don't go with hopes of seeing the Shroud of Turin.