Turin - White Night

Ready, set, go and Trenitalia plays a little trick on us: the much-advertised online tickets at 10 euros return are not available for purchase. We rush to the station and manage to get a booking for 25 euros return per person. We leave at 20.00 from Como S.Giovanni station and after taking the connection at Milan Centrale we reach Turin Porta Susa station around 23.00. The outward journey is very pleasant, the Trenitalia carriages are all ours. We walk along the avenue on the left, strolling sheltered by the arcades and passing the elegant cafés, and arrive directly at Piazza Statuto. From here, on the right, the magnificent viale Garibaldi begins. Thousands of people storm the city centre. The hospitality is good and the mood, the air you breathe are wonderful.

Only, for anyone expecting music in the squares and food-and-wine stalls as in the white nights of other cities, there will be a small disappointment. But this too is the character of Turin. Through piazza Castello, the Mole and via Po (obviously prohibitive queues to visit the interior of any monument) we then reach the embankments on the river banks, an area of modern or characteristic nightspots. It is almost morning and after a stop in a bar for a minimum of refreshment we retrace our steps because the 5.00 train is waiting for us. With us there are not the weekday commuters but thousands of young people for whom few carriages are ready. All standing until Magenta (but it's so beautiful) and then a nap until Milan Centrale. It is almost 8.00 and we arrive at Como S. Giovanni, perhaps shattered but certainly very satisfied.

What remains is the international and Olympic mood, an organisation that could have been better and a magnificent and often underrated city.