Palazzo Reale was one of the residences of the Savoy family. The tour guide arrived and off we went. We followed him up a beautiful staircase to the first floor. This was the floor we would tour. The first few rooms were pretty common (similar to other palaces I have toured in the past). The tour guide spoke rapid Italian and much of the vocabulary was new to me. I could pick out a few words here and there, but learned more information from the descriptions of each room which were written in 4 languages on a board in each room.
I usually was the last person to head on to the next room as the description was pretty detailed and took me a few minutes to read. There was a second man whose job seemed to be to make sure no one wandered away during the tour. He followed the group into each room. I thanked him for letting me spend a few extra minutes in each room reading the boards as I was not able to understand everything the tour guide was saying. He was very kind and even started to provide more information about some of the rooms. He spoke very clear Italian and was easy to understand.
My favorite rooms were the dining hall which had a beautifully set table with fancy china, glasses, and silverware and the ballroom which was huge and elegantly decorated. The last stop on the tour was the famous Scala delle Forbici (Scissor Staircase). This staircase did not have a description provided in English. The tour guide went into a very long description of this room. My friend, the other tour guide, asked if I understood. I did not and so he then proceeded to explain the significance of the staircase.
After finishing the tour of the Palazzo Reale, I next went to tour the Armeria Reale (Royal Armory). The armory was located next to the Palazzo Reale. It houses an extensive collection of weapons, both ancient and more modern. I am not generally a fan of weapons and armories, but this one was quite amazing.
I next stopped for lunch at an outdoor café on Via Garibaldi. I ordered a caprese salad and a cheese, eggplant, zucchine baguette. Via Garibaldi is another street which is full of shopping and also has many sidewalk cafés. While eating lunch, I looked through the Torino on Foot tour book that I picked up at one of the tourist information booths. I decided to check out the Contrada dei Guardinfanti area which is the oldest part of the city centre. I took lots of pictures and wandered into a few stores.
The sky quickly darkened and it began to rain. Luckily Torino is a city with many porticoes (covered walkways) and so I manged to stay pretty dry as I headed back towards my hotel. It started to thunder and I could see the lightening flash across the sky. I ducked into the fnac store which is a huge store that sells computers, computer accessories, dvds, cds, and books. I went downstairs and spent the next 2 hours wandering through the dvd, cd, and book sections of the stores. I ended up purchasing 2 dvds. The woman at the cash register asked me for my passport when I tried to pay with my visa card. This was the first time I was asked for my passport in my 7 years of visiting Italy (except of course at the airport and when checking into each hotel). I did not have my passport with me but did have a copy. She said that was fine and after getting my receipt, headed back out where the skies were clearing.
For dinner, I headed back to the Contrada dei Guardinfanti area to a pizzeria that I saw earlier in the day. I had a delicious pizza and my first tiramisu of the trip. The cost was 11 euros with water - unlike the rip off the night before.
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