piemonte

villa la ginestra

so here we are in piemonte, the days have slipped by rather quickly and i still havent caught up with the blog posts- too many days exploring the amazing countryside, helping cook up amazing meals with thomas and just lying by the pool doing nothing!

anyway here is the villa we are staying in, its about 5kms out of a town called bistagno which is north of genoa and south of milan.

basically it doesnt matter which direction you head out in, there are narrow, winding roads through the steep, vine covered, hill sides and every few km’s another church announces a new village to explore. a little further afield are larger towns, all beautiful in their own way, asti, alba, acqui terme, etc.

the first town sal and i explored was alba, which is basically in the centre of one of the most import wine regions of the world, home of the famous barolo wines, we found our way into the center of town and parked near the large piazza so we could go for a wander and grab some lunch.

we found a nice little cafe with lots of locals eating there and ordered a couple of bowls of the local pasta, tajarin with a ragu sauce and a couple of glasses of local red. the pasta is made with extra egg yolks so it is very yellow.

we had only just sat down at the table when we heard a voice calling our names, to our absolute amazement it was 2 friends from home, debbie webb and anne byrne!! we had no idea they were in italy nor did they know we were there – they spotted us as we walked into the cafe as they were coming in to order coffees. shortly after their husbands trevor & chris joined the table and we spent a wonderful hour or so catching up on each others journeys.

it truly is a small world and the most unbelievable coincidences do happen!

the day was rounded off with a wonderful veal neck, red wine ragu with cannelleni beans that was constructed during the afternoon!