You know
you’ve crossed the border and arrived in Italy when the first thing you see is
a local’s garden full of concrete and marble statues. And when the
supermarkets have whole aisle’s dedicated to Olive Oil and tomatoes.
We have
quite literally eaten our way through this part of Italy and enjoyed every
mouthful. When we first arrived Pizza was often been the food for choice
for brekky, lunch and dinner…and we have now expanded our diet to include
Pasta, fish & gelato! Ah how we love Italy…..we love it a lot.
 |
| Turin |
Turin is in
beautiful Northern Provence of Piedmont which is like Tuscany but without the
tourists. Rolling green hills filled with grape vines, hazelnut &
olive groves, hill top villages all boasting a castle and/or massive church,
wineries galore and beautiful villages with winding cobblestoned streets full
of B&B’s and restaurants. A lot of people bypass this area, but it
really is a gem and a gourmet food lover’s dream.
We didn’t
release it at the time but Turin & Piedmont is considered the capital of
the food of Italy (however I’m not sure every Italian will agree) but it’s
bursting with fresh produce, sparkling wine, rare white truffles,
chocolate, the “Bra Sausage” & is where the Slow Food Movement
headquarters are located.
The first
thing we stumbled across in Turin was the local produce market, so we stocked
up on local wine, tomatoes, meat and bread. The food is so much cheaper
than France and better quality and to our delight it was on daily, so we went
back twice. We didn’t really know what to expect but we liked Turin and
found it easy to get around. The locals are really friendly and with an
abundant choice of pizza and gelato shops on every street there was not much of
a need to cook in the motorhome. It’s also home of the ‘Shroud of Turin’
but that’s not really our sort of thing, plus only the Pope & the bishop of
Turin can view it so we skipped the big line up at the museums and spent most
of our time in and around the produce market. We made sure we left Turin
with full pantry cupboards & a bit of wine to wash it all down.
We then
headed south and stopped at an awesome little town called Cherasco. In
the lush Langhe wine district. It’s apparently well known for its
chocolate & snails (we didn’t see any or try any). We intended to
only stay a night as a stopover on our way south, but found it really well
situated and ended up staying for nearly a week. It’s a beautiful village
around 1000 years old with 7 or 8 castles (and summer houses of past Kings
& Queens from all over Europe) and just as many churches, built on a hill
overlooking the hills.From here we did day trips to Alba (factories for Frerro Rocher, Kinder Surprise & Nutella), La Morra & Barolo (home of Nobbiolo grapes and famous for its red’s where you can do wine tasting in their castles’) Monfortme d’Alba (beautiful village sitting on a hill top ridge) Cuneo & Fossano. All beautiful, all worth seeing and extremely affordable. Tuscany gets a lot of attention and so it well should, but if you’re after a less crowded Italian experience, Piedmont is perfect.
We then
headed south and drove along a route that Napoleon took and past many ‘Jesus
boxes’ as call them (concrete shrines depicting scenes from Jesus life
and death) down to the coast and along the Italian Riviera from Savona
ending in SanRemo.
The weather hasn’t been so kind to us so we didn’t get
to see much outside the motorhome windows, but with it’s typical cobblestoned
winding narrow street, impressive coastal drive and world class marina’s it
wouldn’t be hard to spend a summer anywhere along here.
We could
only stay in Italy for a few weeks as we are heading back to France and UK
& looking forward to returning and working on our waistlines again for a
few months in June.
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