Thursday, Aug 31
Friday, Sep 1
Saturday, Sep 2
Sunday, Sep 3
Monday, Sep 4
Tuesday, Sep 5
Wednesday, Sep 6
Thursday, Sep 7
Friday, Sep 8
Saturday, Sep 9
Sunday, Sep 10
Tuesday, Sep 5 - The Piemonte Region, Italy
Had breakfast on the patio.
We then went to go check out the town of Barolo and its enoteca. Got there 5 minutes before they closed (everything in Italy closes down between 12:30 and 3:30 pm), but bought a bottle of wine (Barbera d’Alba, which is our favorite so far and which we had in Verona last year).
Ate a picnic lunch. Pat had bought a salami, but it turned out to be the kind you have to cook first!
Next we went to the hilltop village of Serralunga, which had a magnificent castle. We arrived just in time for a tour, mostly in Italian, but we were able to figure out a lot of what she was saying. The castle had a fresco and three towers: square, round, and suspended. It also had its own water cistern, an iron grate on the main gate, and markings on the walls in the great hall that counted the days of sieges, of which there were many.
We drove down through Alba – very stressful drive – to go see Barbaresco. The enoteca there was in an old, deconsecrated church. They charged for tasting, but it was good wine. Pat bought 3 Barbarescos.
It was getting very hot, so we drove back to Sinio to rest for a while. Played with the owner’s kitten, Pinot. This kitten knows how to manipulate James, it’s quite funny. He'll try to confine her to their house, and she'll come out on the window box upstairs and meow and scare him to death. Then he'll go get her and bring her down. She knows exactly what she's doing.
Before dinner we sat on the patio and talked with a couple who both work for a guy who owns a $28 million yacht. This is part of their short “vacation on land.” They were about to fly back to Ft. Lauderdale to accompany the yacht as it traveled on another ship across the Atlantic to do a Mediterranean tour. The couple cracked open a bottle of ’95 Chateau LaTour wine which some Russians had given them as a gratuity, and which I guess is outrageously expensive. They shared some with us. It tasted okay, I guess, if a bit leathery.
We went to dinner near Serralunga at La Rosa Dei Vini. I had a tiny asparagus quiche and ravioli with rosemary. Pat had raw veal, sliced thin, mushrooms in risotto, and veal with cauliflower fritters. He also had a chocolate sponge cake dredged in amaretto for dessert. The wine was another spectacular Barbera d’Alba. At dinner a German couple behind us was playing cards. The man kept burping loudly and hollering out when he got a good card. Kind of a German Stanley Kowolski. We drove back on scary switchback roads in the dark.
There were huge hornets buzzing around the castle. Sometimes they came inside. James said that if three of them stung a cow, it would die. He vanquishes them with a miniature, electronically charged tennis racket. We left him to do battle with an errant hornet and escaped upstairs. Somewhere someone was shooting off fireworks. Fireworks are very popular in Italy.
