On Vacation - Piedmont, Italy

After leaving Lake Como we headed south west to Piedmont in the Monferrato Hills.  This area is known as undiscovered Tuscany.  To that we can attest there were very few tourists anywhere.  Our apartment rental was nice and had a lovely pool that the kids really enjoyed.  The owners also had two dogs and two cats which the girls just adored.  I was not happy when we found a cat in our apartment since I'm allergic but otherwise I was happy for the animals to be around.  They were all very cute and tollerant of being petted a lot.  We spent the mornings traveling around to see different towns and the afternoons by the pool.  The mornings were definitely more difficult than our last trip to Tuscany.  The first reason is that we were there in August when everyone in Italy apparently is on vacation so many shops were closed and towns were like ghost towns.  The second reason is becuase it is undiscovered there are really no books out there listing the towns that are must sees.  We did our research, albeit only two days before we left, and came up with a list of towns that people had recommended online.  Some of these towns were a hit and others were not. We drove about an hour south to Alba since it is one of the main towns in the area and we thought it would be a good place to start.  Unfortunately the day we were there was the day that all shops in that town are closed.  Fortunately we had other towns we wanted to see so we headed out. 

The driving around Alba was beautiful as it was hill after hill of vineyards.  If I were to go back I would definitely find a rental in this area.  We stopped in the town of Barbaresco which was basically deserted except there were two wineries open.  One had just opened and the man there had just gotten back from Holiday and the other was a local family winery.  We stayed there for a while and Jason chatted it up with the the man while tasting the wines.  I didn't worry about the girls being in the winery since the guy running the shop had a small boy who was pushing a stroller around and crashing into everything and the man was completly at ease. 

We all had to laugh when he picked his son up and had him smell the wine and the little boys face lit up in joy.  He gave him a quick sip and the boy was off to play.  Jason bought some wine and then we kept talking and the man ended up giving us a free gift which was another bottle of wine.  I'm glad Jason remembered what it was becuase when we got home we realized that it was a completely unlabeled bottle.  It made for a nice end to our exploring that day. 

During the middle of the week we had a chef come to our apartment one night and teach us how to make a piedmont meal. Paolo was great. The kids really liked him and he was really good at including them in the cooking and having them help. We made a ricotto/olive mousse with toasted bread, vitello tonnato, cheese risotto and tiramisu. They were all wonderful and we made so much that we ate it for three days! I'm looking forward to making them again since Paolo also gave us his cookbook. It made such an impression on Ali that since we have been home she has asked to help me cook a lot.

The day after Paolo came we headed to Torino.  It is where Paolo is from and he made a good argument and told us exactly where to go.  It was not my favorite city though and dragging to kids around a city on a hot day didn't last long before we headed back to the apartment  and the pool!  On our last day we went to another random town and ended finding a great little village.  Not a foreginer to be found and daily life just happening around us.  We stopped at the local bar for our coffee and then went to the bread shop, cheese shop and salami shop.  It was a nice way to end our visit to Piedmont.