Day 4 – Friday August 13th

It was storming outside, the thunder was enough to shake the house, it sounded like it was right outside our window. It’s been a dreary day today, so I decided to read my book Paris to the Moon by Adam Gopnik. It is such an interesting book, he moved to Paris with his wife and newborn in 1995. He has such an insider/still American look on Paris and it’s culture.

We ate tortellini de brodo – which is tortellini stuffed with veal in broth. It was very good sprinkled with some Parmesan. We left the restaurant and walked down the street to La Dolce Vita for an espresso.

I spent the afternoon with Tanya – Tat’s cousin – and her family. We got gelato (hazelnut and pistachio) and then I drove to Flimalbo with her family. It is a beautiful town. It has an older feel to it. There are built in stone arches and tunnels under buildings like you see in old movies. It has a more gothic and stone city feel than Pieve. Fimalbo is really cute. Its interesting because the US is so flat, especially the Midwest, but coming here, the towns are built in valleys and on hills. They flow with the earth and natural surroundings; they don’t combat it and conquer it.

Tanya is doing a fashion show with her cousin Alicia for the town. So she tired on clothes for an hour – the outfits were such a different style, almost 80’s throw back with a bit of Len Druskin feel to them. We walked about Flimalbo for a bit and then headed up to Indoca to see Monte Chimone.

Monte Chimone is thee highest mountain in Italy at 7,000 feet roughly. Looking out from the top you get to the see the valleys of the mountains. It was such a beautiful site, seeing the different shades of green in the different tree and gassy spots. It was a beautiful day so I lucked out. It is interesting to look out and see the expansive mountains of Italy and compare them to the Rockies back home that I know so well. It’s a bit hard to grasp that the mountains in Colorado are 14,000 feet and the highest one here is half the size. They really feel much smaller and more gradual compared to the steepness of the Rockies. The houses on it are from the old farming days where they would put planks across the roofs and layer straw and hay on top, where the two parts were at different ground levels, so the animals could walk in to the basement from outside down below and the people could walk in at ground level for their house on the level above.

Tat and I made our own dinner – pasta with red sauce. It was good and we listened to music. After dinner we got ready and went out. We met Barbara at Albergo Galli – which is the rooster hotel – and had some drinks. I drank blueberry vodka with blueberries in it called Mirtillino. I guess that’s a traditional Italian drink usually used as a digestive after meals. Then we stopped by the new bar down the street and then off to the Picsina, we ended up closing the place down and came home around 3:00. We went to bed and woke up at 3:00 the next day. Thankfully her family had gone to Tuscany for the day.