Turin Olympics
Nov 15th, 2005, 04:03 PM
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Turin Olympics
Hi - will be in Provence in February and just ralized that we will be there when the winter Olympics will be taking place in Turin, Italy. Michelin says it takes about 4.5 hours to drive there but the roads looked very windy through the mountains and I was wondering how difficult or easy they may be? Has anyone done this drive for real?
Option two is to take a train. The train schedule will take an entire day out of our schedule unless we drive to Genova and take the train from there.
We are only in Provence for a week and without any venue tickets we thought it might just be fun to walk through the olympic village - but it seems a bit of a hassle getting to a from...any thoughts?
Option two is to take a train. The train schedule will take an entire day out of our schedule unless we drive to Genova and take the train from there.
We are only in Provence for a week and without any venue tickets we thought it might just be fun to walk through the olympic village - but it seems a bit of a hassle getting to a from...any thoughts?
Nov 15th, 2005, 10:13 PM
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Provence is a pretty big place, and the games are spread out around a wide (and not always that accessible) area of Piedmont. So, depending where you're starting from and where you're aiming for, the road journey might be quite a bit shorter or longer.
The basic route, though - the motorway from Grenoble to Turin - is generally pretty easy driving, and open more or less all-weather. It may look very bendy on the map: it's really just another Italian motorway (though all Italian motorways require driving skills rarely called for on empty cross-desert US freeways).
A lot of the other twisty roads on the map are closed in midwinter anyway.
I don't think us ordinary civilans can get into the Olympic Village - the competitors' living complex - though there are a number of atmospheric street events both in Turin and scattered around Piedmont. Wherever you're thinking of making for, though, you'll need to allow time for getting to car parks, then getting public transport on to the place you actually want to visit.
Personally, I enjoy Alpine motorways in the summer. In midwinter, I'm enough of a snow-phobic to avoid driving in the dark. If you're as wimpish about these things as me, there'll be very little time left in Turin to do anything, once you've allowed for driving there, parking, being bussed and doing it all again in reverse.
The basic route, though - the motorway from Grenoble to Turin - is generally pretty easy driving, and open more or less all-weather. It may look very bendy on the map: it's really just another Italian motorway (though all Italian motorways require driving skills rarely called for on empty cross-desert US freeways).
A lot of the other twisty roads on the map are closed in midwinter anyway.
I don't think us ordinary civilans can get into the Olympic Village - the competitors' living complex - though there are a number of atmospheric street events both in Turin and scattered around Piedmont. Wherever you're thinking of making for, though, you'll need to allow time for getting to car parks, then getting public transport on to the place you actually want to visit.
Personally, I enjoy Alpine motorways in the summer. In midwinter, I'm enough of a snow-phobic to avoid driving in the dark. If you're as wimpish about these things as me, there'll be very little time left in Turin to do anything, once you've allowed for driving there, parking, being bussed and doing it all again in reverse.
Nov 16th, 2005, 12:22 AM
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I attended the Salt Lake 2002 Winter Olympics and there is an Olympic Village for folks who are not athletics...that is where all the "happenings" are...its very fun! However, you *may* have to have an olympic ticket to get in...that I can't remember....check into that....but I am not talking about where the athlets live...
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Nov 16th, 2005, 10:31 AM
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When looking for information here on this forum (or anywhere on the internet), be sure and search for <i>Torino</i>, not just "Turin".
A thread from this summer was recently updated with a brief summary from a Wall Street journal article on the disparity between sales of event tickets (below projections) and hotel reservations (everything sharply all booked up in a 50, 100- or more-mile radius).
See http://www.fodors.com/forums/threads...p;tid=34663785
Best wishes,
Rex
A thread from this summer was recently updated with a brief summary from a Wall Street journal article on the disparity between sales of event tickets (below projections) and hotel reservations (everything sharply all booked up in a 50, 100- or more-mile radius).
See http://www.fodors.com/forums/threads...p;tid=34663785
Best wishes,
Rex
