Piazza Vittorio e Fiume Po

On Saturday I went for a walk…a really long walk. I would show you on a map, and I’m sure you would be impressed. But alas, I am technology challenged in some areas. When I try to save a map of Torino it won’t let me draw on it. But you can imagine with me…
After walking to the market for some food because everything is closed on Sundays and grabbing coffee and a pastry for breakfast we set out to explore Torino. We wanted to go to the Piazza Vittorio and go to the river [fiume Po].

To start off we took the metro, which is brand new, to downtown Torino. We walked the streets, and walked a lot more streets as we headed in the direction of the River. We stumbled onto a movie set which was so fun to watch for a few minutes. The native Italians sat in the grass under the trees surrounding the park, just looking on. They looked as if it happens all the time.

We arrived at the Piazza, which looks a little different from the ones I’ve seen. It was huge, and does not have a statue in the middle which is unusual. We walked along one side, sat for awhile and people watched and then walked the other side before crossing the river.

This is a picture from Piazza Vittorio, looking across the river. I was cutting out the cars that were zooming by...

The river is called the little river. I think this is funny because I would classify the river as huge or large, but I wouldn’t call it small. And it is the longest river in Italy, so the name makes no sense to me. We didn’t really have a plan once we crossed the river. For some reason we thought it would be a good idea to walk to see the villa at the top of the hill. We didn’t want anything too strenuous, like walking up to a view point (which we should have just done). It was a beautiful house and translated is the Villa of the Queen.

We walked along the river and then the streets of downtown to the metro, to the apartment. At the apartment we promptly tried to cool off and prop up our feet. I didn’t mention that it was close to 90 degrees and between 85 and 90 percent humidity?! I sweat through my clothes regularly and Saturday it was awful. After resting my feet for a couple of hours I went out and got gelato with friends (who had also walked a lot that day). Nothing like gelato to make things better!
I am so glad that I got to walk the streets of this beautiful city, and just take my time. I am so excited to explore it some more.
I’m off to study for my first Italian test! Yikes!