This
was as Italy should be. After dinner, too, as we stroll in the
showy Italian sort of piazza near the inn, the florid music which
fills the whole square, accompanied by a female voice of some
pretensions, again thoroughly Italianises the scene, and when she
struck up our English national anthem (with such a bass
accompaniment!) nothing could be imagined more incongruous.
Sleeping at La Tour at the hotel kept by M. Gai (which is very good,
clean, and cheap), we left next morning, i.e. Tuesday, June 16, at
four by diligence for Pinerolo, thence by rail to Turin where we
spent the day. It was wet and we saw no vestiges of the Alps.
Turin is a very handsome city, very regularly built, the streets
running nearly all parallel to and at right angles with each other;
there are no suburbs, and the consequence is that at the end of
every street one sees the country; the Alps surround the city like a
horseshoe, and hence many of the streets seem actually walled in
with a snowy mountain. Nowhere are the Alps seen to greater
advantage than from Turin. I speak from the experience, not of the
journey I am describing, but of a previous one. From the Superga
the view is magnificent, but from the hospital for soldiers just
above the Po on the eastern side of the city the view is very
similar, and the city seen to greater advantage.
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