The Clemens family left Chambéry for Turin by the fast express train, which Sam noted “makes  4 miles an hour—the other trains make only 3 1/4 . By 11 we were out of sight  of Chambery.” Three hours from Turin, the train barely won a race with a  team of oxen, Sam wrote [MTNJ  2:185]. It took  eight more hours to arrive in Turin, at about 7 PM. They took rooms in the Hotel  d’Europe, which Sam noted  had “wonderful rooms” [186].  They went to supper and drank Barolo wine.

Settled into their rooms, Sam  took a stroll down through an arcade a half-mile, noticing everything. There were more books for sale in Turin than he’d seen anywhere in Europe; the city  was beautiful with “vast squares enclosed with Yellowstone huge  blocks of palaces”; an open-air concert drew people to a “yard full of chairs  & tables where people drank & smoked”; “pretty shops all around”;  “Punchinello show—watched it—.” Sam thought Turin was the “very  livest town we have seen since Hamburg” even if it was “but a copy (inferior)  of Milan”  [MTNJ 2: 87].