Wednesday 20 September (Day three)
Another hot sunny day in Torino. Today was labelled Organisation Day. The plan was to make plans! I made a bunch of small shopping lists and we set out on the first part of the plan – to see what was going on with the Egyptian Museum’s ‘Heritage Day’ cheap admission night on Saturday. We are not really museum goers. In London, this works really well – almost all museums are free, so popping into one for an hour or less (often our limit) is practical. Not so much so if a museum has a hefty admission price. The Egyptian Museum in Torino is the world’s second largest collection of Egyptian artefacts after Cairo. It costs 15 Euros to get in but on Saturday at 6:30pm the price goes down to 5 Euros. We’re in!
To get to the museum we walked over to the Porta Palatino. This is a Roman aged gate which has a large arch and two towers – an icon in this neighbourhood. (The other is an anchored balloon, in the Balon neighbourhood just a few dozen metres north.) In cooler weather it would be a great spot to sit and sketch or read – noted! Just beyond the gate is a lovely square with restaurants. I’ve always thought it very pretty, it reminds me of De Pijp in Amsterdam with its clean and orderly look. And just beyond that is an arch leading to a narrow lane of shops and cafes, this time having a somewhat French look, echoed in many cities. We’ve heard about a little bar that sells garlicky tongue sandwiches and vitello tonnato at the start of this lane and made a note of where it is so we can come back.
