Italy 2018 - Hop on, hop off

I was woken this morning at about 7:30am with a WhatsApp message from someone at work. For me, this is a very late hour (which is probably why the sender felt justified in doing so); I felt pretty awful after I got up. This is no doubt due to the dehydration and very mild sunstroke from the day before: I have a huge red v on my chest where the open top of my shirt let the sun in. After several cups of tea and a cold shower, I started feeling better.

The city of Torino - or at least the part that interests us - is laid out as a grid, so one can take alternative paths and still get to the same destination. Today we walked up one pedestrian street, took in a detour to see a new piazza and statue, then found ourselves once again on Via Po. Our destination was one corner of Piazza Castello, which is the base for the local hop on/off buses. There are three lines (A, B and C) although I get the feeling that line C wasn't running today. I bought tickets for lines A and B.

First off was the line B bus, which set off down Via Po then toured around the south of the city. These are areas that we would never have seen on our own, which justifies taking the bus. That said, much of what we saw was industrial and not particularly interesting. We came back to Piazza Castello via a new route, so we saw lots of buildings which are new to us.

When we got back to base, there was a line A bus waiting, so we jumped onto this bus. The route of line A is shorter but more interesting: again, down Via Po, but this time we crossed the river Po and spent some time looking at the fancy buildings on the other side of the river. We then crossed back, went past the Valentine gardens which are very large, then turned into the main road that goes past the railway station (which is near to our flat). We also went around the market area before coming back to Piazza Castello.

The tickets are good for 24 hours, so theoretically we can walk to the bus stop of line A which is close to us, get on the bus, ride with it almost a complete circle to the gardens and get off there. Coming back we might be able to ride once more from the gardens to our local stop. No one checks the tickets anyway.

After we finished riding the line A bus, we walked back home via another road, Lagrange (named after the mathematician, who was a local boy). First we had a pizza (my first) and an ice cream, then carried on down the road, past the Egyptian Museum and many shops, and thence to the railway station.

Today was hot and muggy, my least favourite combination of weather; it was a relief to get home and into the shower. 

I wrote yesterday that we had lost the electric key button which opens our building. I went to the desk which manages the hired flats and told them; the girl there then produced the button! It transpires that it fell off the key ring in the hallway outside our flat and someone (maybe one of the cleaners) picked it up. A weight off my chest.