As a way to relax at the end of our vacation, we decided to
spend a few days in the Piedmonte region.
This is where quite spectacular wines come from. The area is at the foothills of the Alps, and
has beautiful, rolling green hills with vineyards and Hazelnut trees.
We booked a room at a beautiful little winery near
Sinio. The hosts are wonderful people
who love entertaining and learning about where their guests come from.
There were two couples from Germany, a couple from
Switzerland, and a couple from Austria as guests. Um, everyone spoke German except the hosts
and us…Luckily, these lovely people all switched to English when we were in the
room.
One of the guests sneezed and another did wish them
Gesundtheit! I always thought that was
one of those made up, TV German things!
After our delightful breakfast, we wandered around the area
and stopped in the town of La Morra.
No lizards, but apparently there are Big Foot sightings in
town!
There are 2 churches, right next to each other…just like
Starbucks in Near Seattle!
We stopped in the Comunale de La Morra, which is a
cooperative of the local wine makers.
They were having a special wine tasting of Barolos – The King of Wine
and the wine of Kings! We stood in the
middle of the room feeling very imitated.
So we left!
After a couple of minutes of girding our loins, we went back
in and tentatively asked what the deal was.
Fortunately we got a lovely lady, who spoke English, who explained that
we pay 10 Euro, received a glass and ran around tasting the wines of a dozen or
so wineries. She was very clear that we
were to give back the glass when we were done!
Since we really don’t know much about Barolo, we enjoyed
tasting different samples from different years and vineyards. It is a very rich, bold wine and we now have
a slightly better understanding. It will
take many more years of research and many more bottles of this wine for us to
truly understand it!
We are very willing to try!
And we did return our glasses when we finished tasting! No sense having a run-in with the wine
police!
During the day, we stopped at a little bar to have a drink
and use the facilities. They served us
cute little snacks with our drinks.
The bar in the bar was neat!
They turned out to be the Snacks Of Death!
I'm not sure what this statue was suppose to represent, but we think he ate in the same place!
As we were getting ready for dinner, the B.F. was feeling chilled. But he soldiered on and was willing to still
go out. We went to a lovely restaurant,
and he felt worse and worse. Nothing
looked good, so he ordered something light from the menu.
It was a shame we didn’t feel better, the restaurant was
very elegant, and the food we did try was good.
There was a family with 2 young children that ran around the restaurant
the whole meal. The little girl had a
major crush on the waiter, and followed him around batting her eyes!
There was also a large family group having the chef’s
special dinner. The waiter would go
around the table with each course and end with the teenage boy….he got to have
all that was left of each dish, and it was usually a lot!
By the time dinner arrived, the BF was feeling really bad, so
we rushed the waiter, as much as you can rush an Italian waiter, got his meal
wrapped up to go, and went back to the B&B.
All during this, I didn’t feel my best.
Since our room had a sleeping loft, we spent the night running up and
down the stairs.
I don’t know what the Italian is for Montezuma’s Revenge…but
I know what it feels like!
The next day we felt better, but drained. So we spent a lovely day, sitting in the sun
and relaxing.
One of the couples from Germany left. They had about a 10
hour drive to Düsseldorf. They were not
looking forward to the small part of the trip through Switzerland, since the
speed limit is ONLY 120 in Switzerland.
That is about 75 MPH for the American audience. And apparently way to slow for that German’s
taste!
Finally, at about 2 PM we had to leave to get our car back
in time and drove off, saying goodbye to beautiful Piedmonte.
Sigh!
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