Dad and Martha arrived at the house with the help of “Betty” the talking GPS system in Dad’s souped-up Lancia. Martha said it took Dad all of about 5 minutes to adapt to the driving techniques in Turin and with Betty's gentle reassurance to "turn around immediately", they made it here safe.
Guerrilla Dinning
I book reservations for a nice dinner for the lot of us at an upscale restaurant in Alba. The menu is entirely in Italiano so I ask, “Hai una menu in englese”. No. We do not have one. Ok, something has to look familiar, right. No, there is nothing that resembles something I know so we each take a shot in the dark and make a selection, guerrilla dinning tactics. We order some appetizers for the table to share and I chose something that looked like it had the word verdura/vegetable in it and everyone else made their selection. The appetizers arrive with a selection of quale egg salad, tuna wrapped in roasted red pepper and steak tartare-raw ground beef. We walk on the wild side and try it. Very nice and enjoyable. We congratulate ourselves for trying something new as dinner arrives. Oooh, mine comes first piping hot smelling of butter and garlic, followed by ravioli’s, pasta’s, lamb, and soup. We dig in but all stare at my meal because that is the only indiscernible one. Hmm, I start to deconstruct it attempting to separate a small mouthful of the stuff but it’s stringy and has the consistency of calamari. We each pass around a bite. Could it be, no, not Tripe. The verdict is unanimous. Yes, I ordered stomach lining for dinner. Yeah, digest that for a while.
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| Tripe - Trippa Verdurine |
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| WHAT is on that egg? |
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| Pizza making assembly line |
Scavenger hunt tourism (Milano, Cinque Terre, Pisa, Florence)
We spent one day in Milan hunting down the Santa Maria delle Grazie church that houses the Last Supper fresco. Come to find out all museums and tours are booked and packed. What is going on? This is not exactly peak tourist season. Lynn’s been educating us on the history of Italy while driving and reads… Italy was unified on seventeen March 1861. The whole car rejoices in an “ooooh”. Italy’s celebrating 150 as a country on the day we tried to tour the museums. No wonder.
Oh, and I finally figured out how to park in Milan. With three people scouting for parking we found one and endured the honking as I backed into the space. Then, we were approached by someone selling parking tickets. Oh, I get it now. I pay him the 2 euro, he scratches out the time and date with a coin and put the ticket on my dash….it seems like there are easier ways to pay for parking, but what do I know.
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| Milano Duomo |
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| Duomo |
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| Inside Duomo |
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| Santa Maria delle Grazie - Da Vinci's Last Supper |
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| Napoleon's Castle |
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| Teatro alla Scala -Milan's Opera House |
The drive to Rome the next day consisted of lunch in Cinque Terre, a drive by of the leaning tower of Pisa and fast food Sushi with a rear view mirror sightings of the top of the Duomo in Florence.
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| Cinque Terra - Five lands |
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| Cinque Terre |
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| Lunch at Cinque Terre |
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| Cinque Terre |
Florence....Well, what happened to the pictures of Florence. We got there at rush hour, illegally parked, ran to find our hypoglycemic selves some food and high tailed it out of there with the last sliver of our patiences and sanity remaining. No Ponte Vecchio or Michaelangelo's David picts to post. Though I did glance in the rear view mirror at one point and see the dome of the Florence Duomo.
There it is!
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