Home sweet Home

Saturday

On Saturday morning we got up early and drove about 40 minutes to a local big city called Alba. In the month of October and first weekend in November, Alba holds a big "truffle" festival. If you haven't tried these strange mushrooms, you really should. They are rare, and in 2001, Tuber magnatum truffles sold for between $1,000 and $2,200 US per pound. That was in 2001. These suckers are incredibly expensive, but so... interesting to taste, they just beg to be purchased.

We arrived in Alba and stumbled across their Saturday morning market. Nate was in heaven as he found stand after stand of homemade salami. We also bought honey and cheese! Yum! Finally, after a wrong start or two, we made it to the tourist office and they pointed us in the direction of the truffle festival. A two euro entrance fee got us into a big tent with booths lining the sides. The side booths sold everything from truffle cream, truffle sauce, truffle oil, chocolates with truffles, truffle sausage, wine, Italian cheeses, grappa, hazelnut spreads, desserts, pastas, the works, while the center stands held vendors selling the truffles themselves.

We meandered, trying free samples, buying things here and there, before heading to the middle to smell the truffles. I wish I could describe the scent. It makes my stomach rumble just thinking about it!

Eventually we ran out of free things to sample and decided to do lunch. How a large city like Alba could have so few restaurants (or at least those that are hard to find), I do not know... but we finally ended up at a Pizzeria/Restaurant off the main drag. The pizzas were cheap, but they also had a menu called the "truffle menu". Having smelled truffles all morning, we gave in and got one pizza and one truffle menu. The pizza was average, but the menu was unbelievable.

The meal started with some sort of cheese drizzled in truffle oil, with shaved truffle pieces on top. First course was ravioli stuffed with truffles, in a cream/truffle oil sauce (probably my favorite pasta of the entire trip). Second course was the famous sausage made in the city of Bra, of course served with shaved truffles and in truffle oil. Dessert was some sort of hazelnut cake. All in all, a delicious meal.

After lunch we went back to the truffle fair and loitered a while longer, buying Christmas presents and the like, until we were too tired to go on. We started walking back to the car, and on the way passed the most delicious smelling bakery. I am so sad I didn't get a picture, as the "cookies" that we bought there were unbelievable. Basically it was like two crunchy, small cookies, with chocolatey spread holding them together. So rich I could hardly finish mine. In fact, I don't think Nate finished his. He had two chocolate cookies held together with vanilla cream.

Since we were coming home so early, we decided to stop at this massive looking mall we had seen in the town of Canelli. It was quite the experience. Basically it was just a giant supermarket with a few other stores in it... some clothing, a pharmacy, perfume shop, etc. We actually bought Elena's birthday gift there, and a few more souvenirs.

We drove home and I whipped up some pasta with the leftover pasta sauce we'd made a few days before. Then we let Elena play in the whirlpool bathtub one more time before heading to bed.

Sunday

Elena woke me up bright and early on Sunday. Nate slept in while I fed and changed her. An hour later I shook him awake and we were busy as bees packing up the car. Man, we had accumulated so much stuff... we were afraid that we were going to have to leave something behind!

We took a different drive home, this time going over a mountain pass in Switzerland. It was stunningly beautiful. The tops of the mountains were snowy, while the mid sections were bright with fall colors. Of course, castles sat atop many a mountain, and cattle grazed up in the meadows. I wished that we could have stopped.

About eight hours after leaving we arrived home. Elena was so delighted to be there, she almost didn't know how to contain herself.

As always, vacation was wonderful, but there is something special about home sweet home.