Italy Tour Begins!

We left Riva at 9 a.m. for our 16 day tour of Italy! The destination was Torino, Italy, but we stopped at two churches along the way. Unfortunately traffic was bad, probably because of the wet weather, but we made fairly good time considering the delays. We first stopped at a much older church, Basilica of Superga, that was under construction at the moment in Chivasso, part of the region of Turin.
We then continued to a church by Mario Botta, also in Turin, but a little outside of the city center. It is a very unconventional looking church, but beautiful and moving. It still has the characteristics that he includes in all, or at least most of his buildings, things like circles in both the plan and details and brickwork in "stripes" are the two most notable design features.
We made it to our hotel close to 4 p.m. and then headed out to wander until dinner time at 7:30. We left the hotel following a guide-map of sorts that showed a nice walk that would allow you to see a few key places of interest throughout the city. We didn't make it to all of them and strayed from it every now and then, but we did see San Lorenzo chapel, a few interesting piazzas, an interesting exhibition in Piazza San Carlo of photography from African and Middle-Eastern countries and some less populated areas of China showing life, death, various struggles and emotions throughout life to represent the path of Buddha.
Tomorrow we spend the day in Torino; nothing is scheduled as a whole group, so we have all done some research into places we might like to go see. The group of us who walked today may go back a few places to see them during the day, as it was almost dark when we saw a lot of them.
Unfortunately, this internet connection doesn't seem to want to let me load photos onto the blog, so it will have to wait until later; At least I was able to update it some!