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Museo dei Cavatappi
Some of my favorite examples is the corkscrew museum.Ciao a tutti!
It has been a wonderful week or so back in Italy. I've been staying with Mattia and his family in Rivalta di La Morra. I've basically been living the lazy lifestyle of 20-somethings in small Italian town. Sitting around, talking, drinking, eating, smoking (not me), going out every night, etc. We did some touristy things around Alba and Bra like visiting a corkscrew museum and the Gastronomic Science University. We also spent an entire day on the beach in Finale with his sister and another friend and I was so vigilant with the sunscreen that I didn't get a sunburn! The beaches in this area aren't the best in my opinion, but there was a beautiful view of mountains and a castle and the sand was full of beautiful sea glass which we spent a while collecting. (My beach camera is not cooperating so I can't put pictures up.)
The best part of late May in Italia, other than the almost perfect weather, are the cherries, strawberries, and poppies. Mattia's yard has 3 cherry trees just busting with ripe fruit. And they are almost all perfect and shiny and you can eat them right off the
Papaveri
Poppies are everywhere in May- my favorite! tree. It's heaven. One day instead of being a lazy bum, I spent a couple hours picking cherries and and strawberries and then cleaned and pitted them, and made a cherry pie and cherry delight. It's really difficult to make anything other than Italain food here. It's a huge production to find the ingredients, the pan, convert to metric, etc. But it all turned out alright and his family loved the desserts. I just can't get over how they all these ripe cherries and they don't make desserts with them! I also made a simple asian stir fry with vegetables and rice noodles one night, which was also a hit. I have singlehandedly introduced this family to asian food and chopsticks 😊
I haven't been venturing too far outside of my comfort zone which means that when Mattia is around I don't try to hard to understand and speak Italian, and therefore haven't improved my language skills much. I did go shopping with his sister twice and and was forced to converse in Italian, which was great. Those moments can be really awkward, as we both admitted to each other. I'm shy enough without the added language barrier. I
Ciliegie
Picking cherries from one of the 3 trees bursting with ripe fruit. don't know what to say in English let alone Italian. I do love his family, though. More on that later, because I'm tired of the computer.
On my last day we went to the mountains for a hike and picnic. I can't even tell you where we were and probably Mattia couldn't also, but it was perfectly beautiful, like much of Piedmont.
Today I started WWOOFing at Lake Como. I was scared to come to a new place where I actually had to use my Italian, but it's working out well so far and it's unbelievably beautiful.
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Jamie
non-member comment
This is so amazingly beautiful!!! How long are you back in Italy?