La Venaria Reale

 Buon Giorno,

Most European cities have a Hop On, Hop Off tour bus. Maybe cities in United States have these, too, and I just haven't noticed. I have never availed myself of one--until today.  I wanted to go the La Venaria Reale, a sumptuous palace and garden complex, and it happened to be on one of the routes.  I booked on line, and the lovely receptionist at my aparthotel printed out my ticket.

I showed up at the bus stop and was launched.  Admission to the palace and gardens were included.  I find Torino confusing.  Usually I can orient myself by metro lines and stops, but Torino's are few and far between and not catered toward tourists.  There are plenty of tram and bus lines, but I would have no idea which ones to take.  So I had a long, long bus ride.  I thought I was in the fancy part of the city, but no. To get to the really fancy buildings in the historic center, I'm going to have to walk beyonrd the Castello.

One of the stops was the soccer stadium.  There's a museum dedicated to Torino's Juventus team.  My energy is limited so I took a pass.

At last we fetched up at Venaria Reale.  It's evidently its own city.  If you can tell from the name Venaria, it began its career as a royal hunting lodge--rather like that other over-achieving hunting lodge outside of Paris.  In fact Venaria reminded me somewhat of Versailles.  It's as large as Versailles or nearly but built in a different style.  It is in fact yet another project.

I was constrained both by the bus schedule and my own physical limitations, so I rushed through a lot of the introductory information on the House of Savoy and the stages of the construction of the palace.  The state rooms are grand--some of them I'd call grandiose.  Always look up.  The ceiling frescos are always delightful and the plasterwork was intricate and beautiful.  The rooms were sparsely furnished because the palace was abandoned and neglected after the fall of the monarchy, and I suspect most of the royal goodies were moved to the Palazzo Reale and Palazzo Madama.  But the place is definitely worth a visit and worth all the trouble it took to get there.

I was glad to escape to the gardens.  I don't like being in crowds, and I do like open green spaces.  Italian gardens tend to be very formal and geometric.  The gardens at Venaria are huge, and I feel I barely scratched the surface even though I wandered around for a little over an hour.  If you have more time and energy than I do you can make a day of it, as the garden features some cafes.  An apero under the trees with a view of the alpine foothills sounds pretty nice.

But I had to get the bus back.  We took a different route home, so I feel I got to see a lot of the city, including real people neighborhoods. I liked the service so much, that I'm going to use it tomorrow to reach my next target.

I came home worn out and hungry.  After having my water and taking off my contact lenses and shoes, I poured some of that wine from Sardinia.  I'd never had wine from the island before, and I really like it.  I had some almonds and a Southern Italian snack I'd brought from home.  My version is called Taralmini, and are small baked rounds of dough flavored with rosemary.  They may sound dull, but they are, in fact, very good.

Dinner will be Agnolotti, and if I feel I need more sustenance, I have some Piedmontese cheese.

Ciao for now