Blogs from Piedmont, Italy, Europe - page 28

It’s 7 AM I’m sitting on the end of the bed, the doors are open and I’m looking out over the valley of Piedmont. Birds are singing, church bells are ringing and slight breeze is blowing. I’m writing this to ensure that I never forget this moment of closeness to god and everything around me. We ate breakfast at the B&B, and while sitting we observed an older picture. After studying we decided it represented the 7 deadly sins. We weren’t sure but we thought it was. We started where we left off on the Strada Romantica, as we visited station number nine we saw the same picture of the 7 people in different situations. Yes they represented the 7 deadly sins. It is a fresco painted at the chapel St Roco. We completed the last ... read more

Kirsten has mastered the clutch. We were coming up through a castle gate at an incline of 90 degrees and she was in second gear and was starting to stall and she immediately switched into first gear without any hesitation and successfully brought the Audi into parking area. We walked around the market in Asti this morning and found a nice restaurant; we had a cappuccino and sweet roll. Pierre was our server and of course we thought of our friend Pierre a manager of Olive Garden in Orlando. From Asti we drove south toward Alba we stopped at a small town of Govone. We took a few pictures of the sites and locals and then continued onto Alba. Ok, let me just tell you Alba was one busy city, it took us 1 hour to ... read more

On Sunday, March 8th I took a day trip to the city of Torino. This relatively small city was the location of the 2006 Winter Olympics. Vincent and I had meant to take this trip last weekend, but the night before we wanted to go....we ended up getting back to our residence at 4am and our train was at 8am! Whoops. It's a good thing that this happened though, because there was a HUGE chocolate festival going on in Torino this past weekend. It is held in Torino because this is where solid chocolate originated over 300 years ago! Vincent and I hopped on the 9am train and this got us to Torino at about 11am. Once we got there we met up with Ross and Ping who had just arrived as well. We immediately headed ... read more

Watched Prince Caspian Sunday night with Vic and woke up at 10am to say goodbye to Vic, Xander, Katie, and Laura. They will be in Rome for TWO WEEKS! Lucky lucky team awesome. Katie went down with them for the first week only. From what I have head everyone is having a lovely time down there. We left for Milan, Helen, Sophie, Eughen and I around 11:30. Though I was scheduled to spend the week teaching in Torrino, I thought it would be better to leave from Milano rather than San Remo. I was able to get my laundry done, move my stuff back into the flat and settle . It was nice to have Monday just for moving and settling in. Sophie made everyone jacket potatoes for dinner and between bites of tuna and salad ... read more

An extract from the International Herald Tribune, Commentary by Roger Cohen. "...Its now clear that our credit system the world over was rotten all the way through, a giant house of cards maintained by the ingenious connivance of banks, rating agencies and insurance companies in a monumental heist. The only buyers anyone trusts any more are governments. No wonder Alan Greenspan says hes in a state of 'shocked disbelief'. Hes not the only one... ...its really no wonder, when you think about it that there are still tow guys in the race to become US president, pulling out all the stops in these last days to campaigning to be chosen as the one to face the nightmare. Lets fast forward a year to October 2009. the US unemployment rate stands at 10 percent. Crime is ... read more