The Road Trip: Leg 15 (to Chamonix)

Before we left Courmayeur, we stopped in a cute little cheese shop in town (the waitpeople were in traditional dress), and picked up some local offerings, including an interesting aged Fontina. Most Fontina is soft and a bit boring, though good for cooking; this was firmer and had a natural, cheese mitey rind, and actually had some flavor. Quite a find. We also grabbed some mocetta de cervo (deer bresaola) and lardo, ostensibly for our picnic lunch while hiking up on the mountains.

However, it was really hot. And after we spent some time checking out Aosta (which offers some nice views of the surrounding mountains, but isn't such an interesting town otherwise) we couldn't quite bring ourselves to find a trailhead and go hiking. Luckily, there were a few good turn-offs on the way out of the Valley, so we were able to "experience" a bit of the countryside.

The tunnel between France and Italy under Mont Blanc costs 35.10 E. At 7.25 miles, this is 4.84 E/ mi. And there's nothing to see besides the tail lights of the car in front of you.

It was something of a relief to cross the boarder back in to France; Italy was nice, but not speaking any Italian was a significant handicap. And we were finally able to charge our phone card. And the bread and pastries suddenly became fabulous. Etc., etc., etc.

The last time Julianna was in Chamonix with her family, they stayed in the Hotel Eden, so she contacted them for a reservation. Sadly, they didn't have any free rooms... but they did offer us a room in "the apartment" for the same price. While I thought it sounded a bit odd, and the price was a bit high, she went ahead and booked it.

What an incredible place. We had the run of a two bedroom suite, with a small kitchenette, a nice living room with a giant TV, complete with a couple of little balconies with great views of the mountains. The wifi worked well, so we were able to get Skype with our parents while nibbling on a bit of the cheese and salume we picked up earlier in the day. It was such a comfortable, relaxing time, and just made our return to France that much more satisfying.

While cheese and salume are good, they weren't quite enough for dinner, so we popped downstairs to the Hotel restaurant, and had one of the best meals of our trip. They were offering a limited, off-season, Summer menu, but the dishes were perfectly chosen; there were a variety of apps. and one meat, one fish and one veg. for the mains. We split a meal since we had already snacked, but the dishes were superlative. We started with a Tartelette d’oignon confit et fromage de chèvre which had a perfect, flaky crust, a light, goat cheese custard, and a delicious, surprisingly sweet red onion relish. Afterwards, the  Risotto aux asperges à l’ail was simply perfect; the risotto was soft and tender and spot on, and there was a bounty of tender little spears of asparagus. Those two dishes were revelatory, though particularly notable after our disappointment with our last couple of meals. We finished with a Crème brulée maison, made with lots of vanilla pod and topped with a crust neither too sweet nor too soft nor too thick... along with a great local (?) apple liquor of some sort as a digestif.

And to make the night complete, the owner was watching the Champions League final in the lounge as we floated away from the table, so I got to watch 30 mins. of "footie" as Inter beat Bayern Munich. It was an evening for the ages.


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The Road Trip: Leg 14 (to Courmayeur)

[Ugh, this is so late.... I'm trying to catch up, but there's so much going on now... all the good pictures are published here]


Our last day in Piemonte was jam-packed with wonderful, exciting wine tasting, beginning at about 10:00. We started at Agricola Gian Piero Marrone, a winery who had made a great Nebbiolo d'Alba that we had quite enjoyed in Genova, and was very conveniently located next door to our B&B. It is a small, family winery, currently run by three sisters (one is the bookkeeper, one is the marketing/sales person, and one is the winemaker); our tasting happened on the kitchen table, with a toddler scampering around underfoot. The wines were good, though we preferred the Nebbiolo d'Alba we had tried earlier over the rest of the lineup. We bought a few bottles of both the '03 and the '04 so it will be interesting to see how things develop over the next few years.


After our tour and tasting, we ran back up to La Morra, in an attempt to find a working internet connection and book a B&B in the Val d'Aosta for the evening. I also stopped by the Cantina Communale di La Morra, which is a neat wine shop run by the municipality, dedicated solely to the wines of the Commune of La Morra. All of the Barolo communes have this sort of shop, which is an easy way to find local wines, without having to run around to all the different wineries. I don't think it's non-profit, but the prices are certainly comparable to purchasing directly from the wineries, and there are sometimes a few older vintages.


After lunch, we were able to get a tour of Fratelli Ferrero, where we had been staying the last few nights; Nina, Renato Ferrero's wife, showed us the family's cellars (dating back to the 1700's), gave us a bit of the family history, pointed out some of the plantings, and then took us back to the house, where we checked out the ageing room in the garage. All in all, it's a small-ish setup (with just enough work for Renato and one other guy to handle), and most of the infrastructure has been in place for a generation or two; they were emptying some of the barriques while we were there, and rented a van to transport the wine from the cellar to the garage. The wines were good, though I don't remember too many details now... the second-tier Barolo was quite reasonably priced, and the Langhe Nebbiolo was great, so we got a few bottles and stashed them away for future consumption.


After all the drinking and talking and suchlike, we finally got on the road. It was a nice drive up around Genova back to the Alps, and it felt really nice to be back up in the mountains; it's become more and more apparent that we are "mountain people", and while Toscana and Piemonte are nice places to visit, we really feel more at home when there are snow-capped peaks in the middle distance. Who knows what that means for our return, since San Francisco doesn't have much by way of serious mountains, but that's something do deal with later.


Courmayeur is right on the Italian side of Monte Bianco, i.e. Mont Blanc. It's rather a cute town, though a bit resort-y. The B&B Les Pyramids turned out to be above an Audi garage, which was a bit weird. However, we were able to find a reasonable dinner up the road, though Polenta with Pancetta and Scamorza is maybe a bit over the top. But Mocetta di Cervo (a bresaola-like cured loin of venison) was tasty, and the wine was decent (more Nebbiolo, but not quite the same quality as in Piemonte). A nice end to a good day.



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Piedmontese Paradise

For not being the Alps, Piemonte is pretty damn lovely. It was warm and sunny, and there are vines covering every inch of rolling hillside and you can't throw a brick without it bouncing off the wall of one winery and through the window of another. And while trying to understand that amount of expensive wine is a rather intimidating prospect, it's also a very enticing project.

Our hostess offered a few suggestions of things to see, so after a walk to see the Cordero de Montezemolo Cedar (planted in 1856), we hopped in the car to go tour through some of the highlights of Piemonte; Monforte, Barolo, and Alba.

The road through Barolo was under construction, but it meant that there weren't any cars in the tiny, tiny town that gave its name to one of the world's best wines. We got a nice, cheap lunch at a sandwich shop, who offered a cheese plate of what looked to be good, artisanal cheeses, though none of them were especially interesting or tasty. Quite disappointing.

However, Monforte was a rather nice town. There was an interesting church in the middle, which was built in the early 1900s, and was mostly made of concrete, but nicely decorated concrete. It is beautifully painted on the inside, and there's a basketball hoop in the parking lot. The old church on top of the hill wasn't quite so impressive, but the view was fabulous. We could see the Alps to the West and the Apennines to the South East, and everything in between.

All of that cultural and geographical appreciation made us a bit thirsty, so we found a wine bar and spent the next two hours drinking and eating complimentary prosciutto and lardo. I am very supportive of the wonderful Italian tradition of bringing delicious cured meats with each round, so there's no reason to leave once you've found the perfect warm, sunny spot to drink. We worked our way through some good Nebbiolo d'Alba and such, and found a great Prosecco, the name of which I've now forgotten.

It may have been the wine, or it may have been the GPS, or it may have been confusing road signs, but somehow our route between Monforte and Alba ended up going through the middle of a vineyard; I mean, we were dodging down rows of vines, trying to find our way down off of a mountain, in paths that were designed  more  for tractors than for sedans, and the huge plume of dust making our passage particularly noticeable. And being "off-the-GPS-grid" is a bit unnerving, especially when reaching the closest road means cutting across rows of vines.

Eventually we emerged from behind a "Private Property: No Entry" sign (so it all worked out ok), and continued on to Alba. The couple of streets that make up the pedestrian center of town are quite large, and lined with shopping. It was getting to be tired and hungry and cranky time, and rather than spending the next hour trying to find a good restaurant, we decided to take advantage of our patio and have a picnic. I bought a bottle of Brachetto d'Acqui, a delightful, fruity, sparkling red wine, and Julianna got a gigantic ball of burrata and some marinated artichoke hearts. With a cone of gelato as an apéritif, we had a really lovely meal. And probably thanks to our "CD" [corps diplomatique] license plates, the policeman eyeballing the car when we arrived, 10 minutes after our parking meter expired, didn't give us a ticket. A wonderful end to a wonderful day (though the sunset wasn't quite as impressive as the previous evening).

The Road Trip: Leg 13 (to Frazione Annunziata, Piemonte)

On the day of our departure from Firenze, there were a few errands to run before leaving, the most important of which was my returning to the Scuola del Cuoio and buying the beautiful, hand-made, black leather jacket I had seen the day before.... 

As I emerged from the shop, I heard some distant rumblings of thunder, the first intimation that the lovely weather we had enjoyed was coming to the end. Julianna had returned to the car first, and had things organized and the windows rolled down to it air out. I tossed the jacket in the back, got in the front seat, and prepared myself for a long drive in the rain. Pressed the Prius "Start" button... and nothing happened. Again... nothing. Tried to put up the windows... they inched up slightly before stopping entirely. And then the rain started. It was pouring, the windows were open, we couldn't open the trunk to see if there were jumper cables in the trunk because the trunk is electronic, and we don't know the words for "dead battery" or "Can you jump my car?" And it was 12:30, the beginning of the Italian 2 hr. daily siesta. All the Americans in Florence were camped in a cafe somewhere, or back on the tour bus, and none of the Italian drivers understood English, or had cables. 

For two hours, we stood in the rain, watching the rain pour off the tarp we were able to throw over the top of the car, and periodically going around the corner to see if the nearby mechanic had opened back up yet. We couldn't leave the car and go hang out somewhere warm and dry since the windows were open and some stuff was out on the sidewalk, and the tarp kept blowing up in the wind. That was about the longest, most unpleasant two hours I've spent, though Julianna was incredibly calm and collected about the whole thing. 

By 2:15, the rain had about stopped, and I finally discovered someone at the garage, though his only response to my fumbling attempts to communicate the problem was to say that they open at 2:30... about 2:35, a young guy pulled up, tossed a spare battery and charger in the back seat of a car, and had the Prius restarted in about 10 minutes. He refused payment very graciously, but we were able to press a bottle of Rainoldi Brut Rose on him, so we felt like we were able to demonstrate our appreciation for his help. Such a relief to leave Firenze and head up to Piemonte.

I had made reservations at a very reasonably priced B&B, that happened to be the in-law apartment of a winery, Az. Ag. Fratelli Ferraro. It was a nice, newly remodeled room, with a little kitchenette, and lots of space and a small patio, so we were able to hang up all our wet clothes, and bring all the suitcases inside for repacking and drying. The weather was dry and clear and warm and the sunset behind hills covered in vines was stunning. We found a nice place to eat up in La Morra, and finally felt able to put Firenze behind us.

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Fireze Fiasco! or The Florence Follies

So... Florence (hereafter referred to as "Firenze", which is much more exotic and sexy) has been both wonderful and terrible over the two days we've spent here.

It is beautiful. There's wonderful architecture (besides the Duomo and Cathedral and other "municipal" buildings"), and neat, narrow, windy streets, and some wonderful art, etc. etc. etc. The sights are relatively accessible, and don't cost too much. And the gelato is both plentiful and of high quality (though the best place is the Gelateria dei Neri, which we discovered half-way through our stay, and to which we returned to about four or five different times; "Mexican" chocolate with pistachios and chili, chocolate with orange, chocolate amaro, and pistachio). And there's good shopping and a lot of leather work of middling quality and the center is mostly pedestrianized and there's a river that runs along the edge of the center, which is a generally good thing, even if it's not particularly picturesque.

On the other hand, it is simply filled with American tourists. All the shop people and waiters speak English (and probably French and German), and there are intermittently hordes of people who show up at one of the various attractions and completely swamp the area.

We had good lodging juju, with finding a snazzy, new hotel the first night (Hotel Rosso23), and a much better B&B the second night (B&B Le Seggiole), which had opened about three weeks prior, and is run by an adorable, and gorgeous, and very helpful, red-headed Swede.

But the food was terrible (besides gelato). The first night, we ate at Ruth's, a kosher, vegetarian, Jewish restaurant adjacent to the Synagogue. It was recommended by Michelin, and Italian-Jewish food has a long history, and can be quite interesting. However, this was pretty standard, with decent humus, sub-par falafel, good caponata, and very curious (but not tasty) fried artichokes. We did finish dinner quickly, and were able to make it back across town for a concert in a decommissioned church (playing Stabat Matar and a handful of other pieces), so there was an up-side, but otherwise, uninteresting.

The next night, we set out into the city armed with a good, non-touristy restaurant recommendation. Sadly, they were full that night, and didn't change their minds even after I asked for a seat on four separate occasions. So we circled the neighborhood about three times, getting hungrier and crankier, and just before deciding to blow off the whole thing, I made the executive decision to eat at a place that looked lousy and touristy (with "Italian" items hanging on the walls and fiascos of Chianti dangling from the ceiling) but seemed small and busy.

However, the dining room continued back and back and back on to a covered patio. The waiters were rushing around, and it took five or so minutes for someone to drop off menus, and I still had to ask for a wine list. We ordered a set of starters, which were quite bland, and therefore unobjectionable. Our mains were polpette and a couple of slices of bistecca alla fiorentina. The steak was ok(ish), but the poplette were inedible; terribly salty and a bizarre, very fine, Spam-like texture. And to top things off, the half-bottle of "Chiante Classico" I had ordered turned out to be Toscana IGT, a substitution I didn't notice until after I had given the waiter my credit card. The management had no interest in removing the charge from my bill, and since 10% gratuity had been added to the charge as well, the waiter didn't care I was displeased either. It was the worst meal we have ever eaten.

The Road Trip: Leg 12 (to Firenze)

Left Rome early to get up to either Siena or Florence. Finally, half-way decent weather.


Siena is shit. Terrible food, filled with Americans, all the sights charge for admittance, and it's just big enough, with narrow and windy streets, to get totally turned around in. It's up on top of a hill or plateau, and there are elevators to get up to the city, which just illustrates how touristic it is.


Firenze is much more attractive, though also filled with Americans. Good shopping, similarly pedestrian friendly, more and better churches (besides some of the best museums in the world), and it has a river running through it, which I've long decided is essential for a good city.


Arrived later in the afternoon; reserved time for the Uffizi, and spent an hour trying to find a good hotel.
Dinner at Ruth's, a Kosher Vegetarian resto. Recomended by Michelin, but in the cheap category. I was excited about Italian Jewish food, which can actually be pretty interesting. This wasn't particularly; good humous, fried artichokes, caponata.



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"Oh, the streets of Rome are filled with rubble."

"Ancient footprints are everywhere.
You can almost think that you're seeing double
On a cold, dark night on the Spanish Stairs."


A cold, rainy day is almost the same, but we didn't have any double vision. We were mostly wet and miserable, as Valentina figured we ought to see some of the city, so in spite of the rain, she sent us out into the wilderness of Rome to admire the birthplace of Western Culture. We saw all of the "Top 10 Sights" listed on the back of our map, and a few extras that weren't listed as essential... and I think it's a bit of a cop-out that the Vatican and St. Peter's Square are listed as separate sights. Valentina dropped us off at the Palazzo del Popolo, and we wandered up the Spanish Steps, then down and around and past the Trevi Fountain, and eventually found ourselves in front of the Monumento to Victor Emmanuel II, where we got lunch, then walked around the back of the Monument to see the Foro Romano and the Colosseum (via the Circus Maximus, which wasn't anything other than a long, grotty looking field), and walked through the Piazza Navona and the Pantheon on the way to meet Valentina in the evening, in front of the Castel Sant' Angelo.

I had a fond recollection from my previous visit to Rome of the incredible Michelangelo sculpture of Moses with horns on his head in the church of S. Pietro in Vincoli, and it turned out that we were nearby at one point, so we poked our heads in to appreciate a bit of art.  And I had forgotten how impressive St. Peter's Basilica is, and was blown away when we stopped by the Vatican the next day; the Pieta was really moving, and there's lapis lazuli used as decorative paving inlay, and the choir singing during the Mass was beautiful.

We met Valentina and a number of her friends for dinner at a pizza place in Trastevere, a small, pedestrianized, "Latin Quarter" type neighborhood. This was the first (and last!) pizza we ate in Italy, which is shocking. Julianna's Gorgonzola and Radicchio was wonderful, my Diavola first arrived as a Margharita, then returned with a dash of hot pepper and some salame. It was tasty though, regardless.

The next day we returned to Trastevere for brunch at an unusual place called Bibli. It's a great, all-you-can-eat 20E buffet, with surprisingly good food, that only happens on Sunday, located in a bookstore. The buffet is set up in one of the main reading rooms, with tables scattered around the other rooms. It's really an unusual scene, and being able to browse the stacks while eating quiche or scrambled eggs or whatever is quite nice.