A few days off

We had two days off after the Cesana races and didn’t want to waste them while in Europe. Unfortunately there weren’t too many things that close by that we could go visit. We have a limit on our mileage on the car for the month and we didn’t want to drive too far and go over.

Caleb myself, and Kimber decided to go to wine country are in Italy. We headed towards the Barolo and Barbaresco areas. We figured we could have some good wine and relax for two days and see some pretty awesome Italian cities.

It was a ton of fun; the first day we got there the weather was beautiful and sunny. It was Sunday and in Italy nothing is open on Sundays. It’s a really cool concept but really different being from the US and all. So we basically walked around lonely towns until we found a place to eat. It was random down a side road in one of the towns, but they had amazing food. There were a lot of families eating at about 2:30 or so, we think they must eat supper on Sundays because they were eating the full 4 or 5 course meals. Again another great concept, very family oriented. The three of us on the other hand had just eaten so much for the past week 3 courses for lunch and 5 for dinner we couldn’t bear to eat more than just one, didn’t even have room for dessert. It was amazing food though, that is the best part about Italy.
We went back to the hotel and just hung around for a little while, unpacked and then decided to go walk around the town we were staying in. Again a really nice town, a lot of stores and some were actually open on the Sunday night. This town was a little busier than the small wine towns. Good thing or we would have been extremely bored! We found an amazing pizza place to eat at, it only cost 4.50euro for a pizza, talk about an amazing deal. (I know it sounds like we had just eaten lunch but the night was actually getting late, we do more than eat, time flies by and I don’t know how.) We decided to get pizzas for the next day so we could have then for lunch!

The following day was a pretty gross day out. It started out just rainy and cold and slowly turned into snow. We walked around a town and checked out some of the old buildings. The problem with being tourists in the wintertime is that nothing is really open. We couldn’t see a few of the castles we wanted to but the towns themselves are worth walking through. Caleb found a wine store with really good priced bottles he wanted to buy, so Kimber and I sat there and drank amazing cappuccinos while he read the list and decided. (Another amazing part about Italy would be the to die for cappuccinos). After that we had appointments at local wineries, I’m not going to lie I was a little skeptical I was afraid to be bored. I had the best time at both wineries. The owners and wine makers sit down with you and personally pour their wine for you and talk to you about it, and listen to what you have to see about it. Its crazy the history that goes into all the wine and how many family generations have had their vineyard. On owner was telling us that he thinks this type of wine will die with his generation because the younger ones don’t care enough. I found that to be really sad, I wouldn’t mind coming to Italy and living on a vineyard, it would be like the Parent Trap. That’s a good movie. Speaking of movies if anyone wants to get the Italian wine experience through a movie go watch A Good Year. I saw that one a while and couldn’t stop thinking of it all day.

Ironically enough we went back to the same pizza place for dinner, we couldn’t help ourselves! I think we all fell asleep at 9:30, what an exhausting day, but a ton of fun and a great way to refresh our minds!