Left my heart in Torino – 5

We decided to stay home today.

Breakfast was as cozy as you like, hot tea and biscuits in the sunny kitchen that opened onto the garden, with the TV on. The cat padded in and I chirruped to it, and it curled up beside me.

He likes me more than you now, I said smugly to my host, victorious in my quest to secure the pet’s affections.

Lunch was steak and local cheese, fresh from the mercato, and dinner, when the parents came home, was stewed pork with potatoes and seared apples, my only contribution to the prep being to carefully pat butter on the potatoes. The chef was aware of his line cook’s limitations.

But as it was my last evening in Turin, we went out after all for a nightcap, to the sort of lively, late-millennial brewery that served artisanal red beer and had bright orange walls and an animated crowd. The table next to ours was chattering, with many colorful expletives, about another day at work – just my sort of cool neighborhood hangout.

It was likely not on most visitor itineraries, this place, but it was one I felt I’d dressed for appropriately: no tourist sneakers in sight, just dark skinny jeans tucked into high-heeled boots, a shimmery silver knit top underneath my favorite navy high-street coat. A proper look for what I daresay was…date night?

(Sorry not sorry to my host, because I am going to romanticize the hell out of this evening.)

From there we went for a stroll, hand in hand, around picturesque streets and piazzas: Garibaldi, Castello, Solferino. My host related jokes in his native Piedmontese, our laughter warmed the autumn chill, and it seemed like every footstep carried its own little peculiar charm.

The city looked so different at midnight.

Around Solferino especially, it even donned a slightly menacing air, associated as it was with legends of hellfire and dark magic.

Turin, they say, is where the forces of good and evil are perfectly balanced. There is a tour that starts out in the ‘black’ western parts of the city (including Solferino!) where the gates to hell are said to be, and ends up reassuringly in the ‘white’ parts, like Piazza Castello and the Gran Madre, reputed to be the final hiding place of the Holy Grail.

Entertaining, esoteric, and not at all a bit creepy.

I could also see the other corporeal big-city elements now: the transients and the homeless, the slightly suspicious strangers like the one who accosted us at a crossing. I didn’t understand any of what he said or gesticulated, but my host spoke a few curt words to him and he left abruptly.

What was that all about?

Nothing. Let’s go. And he hurried us away from there.

Artisanal beer, millennial neighborhoods, mystical statues and even urban blight: seeing these tonight gave Turin an additional nuance, an extra layer of sharp-edged reality to anchor the airy golden fairytale outline that was beginning to form in my head.

In the end, I like my cities real.