Day 330: Westwards to Turin

Nothing too exciting here today, just a change of cities! Our train wasn't until 12:30pm, so we hung around the hotel for the morning and waited to check out. We'd gone with the fast train option, so the travel time between Milan and Turin was only about 45 minutes as we rocketed across the plains at 250km/h. The train was fairly full though, and we had an odd moment where a man was sitting in our seats, he moved and glared passive-aggressively so I could put our bags down, then went and sat somewhere else anyway?! Go figure.

Arrived in Turin and decided to walk to our accommodation, about 20 minutes away. Turin has a very neat layout of regular square blocks, so it was quite easy to navigate. It feels very French here, with lots of baroque buildings lining the streets; extremely un-Italian. It was ruled for centuries by the House of Savoy which hails from south-eastern France (near Avignon I think), and their influence definitely shows.

Checked into our place with no problems, though it's on the fourth floor with no lift, so about 80 steps to climb each way! Yikes. It's also a bit gloomy with only a couple of external windows, but it's pretty large and will be nice enough. Good kitchen.

Relaxed for a bit then headed out to explore. We're right in amongst the old core of the city, and fairly close to the Royal Palaces which are on the UNESCO list - the main reason for our visit really. Had a wander around and checked out the buildings, then decided to get in touch with the couple we'd met a few days earlier in Bologna.

Organised dinner with them for 8pm, which went really well. Had a nice dinner at a semi-fancy restaurant - three courses and a couple of bottles of wine! It was a bit pricey, but I guess it's our early anniversary dinner.Weiterlesen