Staying Fit
Americans swooned over Frances Mayes’ sensuous descriptions of Tuscany's rolling green hills and succulent cuisine in her best-selling 1996 memoir Under the Tuscan Sun.
Now she's back with See You in the Piazza: New Places to Discover in Italy, a broader, food-focused exploration of the country that's her home for much of the year (otherwise you'll find her in North Carolina). She says she was especially “knocked sideways” by Turin, or Torino, as the Italians call the capital of the Piedmont region in Northern Italy. “It's a magnificent, manageable city,” she tells us, noting its dozens of museums, colorful outdoor markets, lovely snow-capped mountain vistas, and mouth-watering food and drink — especially its famous bicerin, the coffee-chocolate-and-cream drink that she adores.
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"The city just ticked all of my boxes,” she says.
Below is Mayes’ homage and guide to Turin, adapted from her new book, See You in the Piazza:
I'm at the wood-paneled Caffè Al Bicerin, intimate, with candles on tiny marble tables, when the waiter slides toward me a clear little glass layered with cream, chocolate, and coffee. Sip the layers and you taste Torino. The bicerin — dialect for small glass — has come to be synonymous with the many atmospheric cafés that are the city's life blood. Flush with regal boulevards and piazzas, it's ringed with these delicious haunts.
I came to Torino last summer with my husband Ed and grandson William and loved every minute of the four days we spent blessedly free from mobs. Where are the tourists? we wonder. They're all in Florence.
Torino: forty museums. Sixty markets. Churches, more cafés, contemporary galleries — we must come back. Again, and again.