Torino & the Pedemonte

Wow, it's only 8:00 a.m., and I already need a break from the Bazaar. The base changed our location officially yesterday morning. Sigh. We are now partially in one location that has neither electricity nor communication lines to run, say, credit card machines. But, miracles happen. Hopefully by Tuesday.

Anyway, to take a break, I will reflect on the trip that Chris and I took last weekend to Torino and the Piedmont wine region. It was one of our favorite trips that we have taken in all of Italy!

We were actually facing a traveling dilemma. I wanted Chris to be able to take a trip during his re-integration, but didn't want to be too far from Bazaar stuff. So, we drove the five hours or so to northern Italy's western region!

The whole trip was definitely for food and wine lovers. We are currently on what my mother would call "food detox".

So, we left here on a Wednesday afternoon and drove to Torino, which is the home of the 2006 winter Olympics, the Fiat, and the modern history of Italy! Really, if you live in Italy and appreciate history, you must visit Torino. The first king of Italy lived here, and the city is just so rich in important Italian events.

Our first night, we went to a restaurant called C'era una Volta, Once Upon a Time, and had the "tasting menu" which turned out to be a seven course meal. It was really fun experimental Italian food. This has definitely become the season of pumpkin in Italy. One of our courses had little pumpkins that were stuffed with ricotta cheese and then boiled or something. Not the kind of restaurant for children, definitely, but fun for adults. I passed along my course of what was essentially steak tartar to Chris. I can't handle raw beef.

The next day, we visited lots of great museums. We saw the Shroud of Turin cathedral (supposedly the shroud that Christ was buried in after the resurrection - really neat), the Royal Armory (Chris was really into this), and the Egyptian Museum, which I must say was even better than the one in Cairo.

We partook in a Torinese pasttime of just walking and hanging out in cafes, tasting the official cafe drink of the city - Bicerin, a blend of hot chocolate, coffee, and cream. The Torinese are also supposedly the original European patrons of chocolate and merely passed on the tradition to the neighboring Swiss. So, there were lots of beautiful chocolate displays everywhere.

The next morning, we drove deep into the heart of Piedmont wine country. Most Americans come to Italy and go straight to Tuscany for wine, and this is a mistake! We felt like Piedmont was more beautiful and even had better wine! I don't like red wine, really at all, but I found some that I enjoyed here.

We stayed in Villa Meridiana in Alba - yes, a villa. We spent the next couple of days driving the wine route through the various villages and tasting wines in castles and wine shops in the gorgeous Langhe hills.

Last Saturday, we stopped along the way to Asti, which is famous for their Spumanti. We got there the day before their Palio (horse races dating back to medieval times). So there were festivals for the Palio going on while the enormous Douja D'Or (an annual two-week wine festival) was going on in the same city. We had been tasting red wines for what felt like days, so I was thrilled to get to the counter to taste some sweet white wines. Once you get through the tasting room, you filter out through the shopping section - rows and rows of wines to buy. We had fun stocking our wine cellar that weekend.

Our favorite meal of the weekend (and, we must highlight this, because the other thing you do in wine country is eat), was at Enoclub in Alba. It was in this cool wine cellar, lit by candles, and I had ravioli suffed with pumpkin and ricotta (heavenly) and beef braised in Barolo wine (incredible). It was really bad, in a way, because the restaurants around here don't serve food this good.

We have already decided to try to return next year in September. It will be pushing it with our move, but we must!

I am trying to post pictures, but it seems as if the batteries on my camera are totally dead. So, once I get to that, I'll post some!