October 2, 2026

October 2, 2026

Friday

Torino, Piemonte, Italia

Had a good night’s sleep. Slept until almost 06:00. Showered, shaved, and went down to breakfast. Breakfast here has a lot of choices, but it was just some fruit, and a ham and cheese omelette. The machine-made cappuccino is just that, machine made. Back in the room Mary got up, we had tea and looked at our emails, worked on the blog.

We decided to take a walk around the Quadrilatero, the oldest part of Torino. It wasn’t completely pointless, we were also looking for somewhere by buy “good” peelers. Easy to handle and sharp peelers are necessary in the first step in making limoncello. The first step is to peel just the yellow skin off the lemon; no pith (the white part). The usual Italian peeler is difficult to use, at least for people who were once Americans.

We took a left outside the hotel and headed west down Via della Basilica. When we got to Via Milano we hung a left and headed south. We got to Piazza delle Erbe, where Mary got lost the other day walking back from Serra’s.

Yes that part was left out of the blog the other day. It had been dismissed as a one off. I was in the hotel following here on “find my” and it showed she was in Piazza Castello. That is three blocks at the most from the hotel. But she failed to take right at the palace and continued walk down Via Palazzo di Città. The end of which is Piazza delle Erbe.

She called me, as was expecting her at the door. Sent me photos of the piazza and using the photo app located where she was. I then directed her to walk away from Via Milano, the busy street with the tram. That put her back on Via Palazzo di Città. A block later she was at Via Porta Palatina where she hung a left. From that point it was three blocks to the hotel. The ‘“find my” isn’t always complete up to date on the location. She may need an air tag.

We took a left on Giuseppe Barbarou, now heading east. We follow this until we reach the Piazza Castello. We then walked down Via Roma in the general direction of Eataly. We thought that maybe they would have a peeler we would like. Nope, they only had the hard to use Italian ones.

We left Eataly and walked north on Via Giuseppe Luigi Lagrange. Lagrange changes names to Via Accademia delle Scienze. We passed the Museo Egizio, big deal here in Torino, we have visited a couple times. We got to Piazza Carignano and past the Museo del Risorgimento, which houses the most interesting story of the unification of Italy – completely from the prospective of the ruling family.

On the car side of the Piazza Carignano Mary saw Don Carlo Coltelleria e Articoli per La Casa, a fairly famous knife shop which also carries things for the kitchen. Here we found two good peelers. We left the shop and walked back towards Piazza Castello. Mary wanted pizza for lunch, so we began the hunt for a place to get good pizza.  

Now getting good pizza in Italy isn’t difficult. However, many places want to sell it al Taglio – meaning by the slice. Yes, Fette is slice, and taglio means cut. We looked at a couple places selling pizza al taglio, but Mary didn’t see anything she wanted. We took a side detour from looking for lunch and stopped at the Legami store to get goodies for the girls.

We headed back towards the hotel, when Mary saw a sign offering whole fresh pizza for just 10 Euro. We stopped at Melomagio on Via Porta Palatina for lunch. Mary ordered the Capricciosa. Pizza capricciosa is prepared with mozzarella cheese, prosciutto, mushrooms, green and black olives, artichokes, and tomatoes. Be careful however, some variants include anchovies. Pizza capricciosa was invented in the restaurant La Capricciosa in Rome in 1937, from which it gets its name.

Me? Well, I went with the standard prosciutto and funghi, and a coke cola Zero. We also got a liter of water to share. Now the pizzas here aren’t 18 or 24 inches in diameter. Maybe, 10 or 12 inches. As far as I can tell, Italians either just get a slice or two, or a whole pizza. I have never seen anyone share a pizza with anybody. The whole thing cost us 25.50 Euro (about $29).

Mary’s Pizza

My Pizza

In Both cases we left about half of the pizza.

We returned to the hotel after lunch and took a short nap. Just after it had gone 16:30 we headed to Serra & Pietro’s. At 17:00 we were going to demonstrate how to make limoncello. Serra cooked dinner, spaghetti and clams, and brussel sprouts.

I wasn’t feeling well. Don’t know if it was the piazza, or if I had caught whatever has been bothering Luisa. I was feeling poorly enough we took a taxi back to the hotel, thus missing out on achieving our step goal for the day. Although we still managed to get 8,000 step in.

Back at the hotel it was straight to bed. Full of hope I would feel better in the morning.

Buonanotte e Ciao,

Enrico e Maria