London to Paris to Turin

Posted on 2012/06/20 23:01:51 (June 2012).

[Wednesday 13th June 2012]
Although we'd booked the sleeper train for the return journey from Venice to Paris, on the way out there hadn't been much availability (particularly of private 2 berth compartments) so we'd decided to use daytime trains instead. To make it a bit more of a leisurely journey, we'd also decided to split it over a day and a half, and have a night's stay in Turin.

So as most of the European rail escapades start, we began by getting the Eurostar to Paris in the morning, which conveniently got us there in time for lunch. I decided we should try Le Grenier de Notre Dame, apparently the oldest vegetarian restaurant in Paris - dating back to 1978! The food wasn't amazing, but the seating was reassuringly cramped and uncomfortable, so we really felt like we were on holiday.

After lunch we headed to Gare de Lyon, which is starting to feel like the only other station in Paris apart from Gare du Nord. When we went to Nice we got the train from here, unsurprisingly when we went to Lyon we went from here, and recently the train to Zuirch was (sadly) relocated to start from here rather than Gare de l'Est. Which is a shame as I had a bit of a soft spot for Gare de l'Est, and it was also just very convenient from Gare du Nord.

Anyway, I digress. So at Gare Not du Nord we climbed aboard the TGV for the five and a half hour journey from Paris to Turin. As always I'd booked us seats in first class, so it was a very comfortable journey, albeit a long one. It's about a 400 mile journey altogether. Almost two thirds of the distance (about 250 miles) is covered in the first two hours, as the TGV whizzes along the high speed line from Paris to Lyon, through this largely flat and unchallenging part of France. After Lyon, there's the small matter of the Alps to deal with, and so the remaining 150 miles takes three and a half hours. As compensation for this dawdling rate of progress the scenery is rather nice. Perhaps not quite as dramatic as the scenery on the Zurich to Milan train, but I suppose I am easily impressed by a few snow capped mountains - particularly in June. Also the point at which we crossed the border into Italy was quite exciting - it occurred to me although I had technically been to Italy by train twice before (once when we went to Milan and Florence, another time when we popped over the border to Ventimiglia during a holiday on the Cote d'Azur), I'd never managed to get all the way there by train from London in one day. This felt like something of an achievement.

We arrived in Turin some time after 8, and following an initial difficulty in just getting out of Porta Susa station we eventually made our way to our hotel, and checked in. Then we headed out for an evening stroll, to find something for dinner. I'd already had a look around for places on Google+ Local (bit of product placement there) and chose a Neapolitan restaurant called Reginella. It was a very pleasant evening so we sat out in the street to eat our pizza, as lots of other Turin locals seem to be doing. The pizza was really good - fantastic stretchy dough, and very fresh zingy tomato sauce. Again, it definitely felt like we were on holiday.

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