Hotel Cavour Asti

... point "toe of the mountain" seems a little more appropriate.

We pull into his house, and his parents wave to greet us from the top deck. A small orchard of peach trees, their summer fruits long finished, nestles up against Carlos house in progress. We walk into his house and are greeted by his parents, Luciano and Piera, and his aunt Thea. Both of his parents are around 80 years old, and Thea is 86, but they have the fitness and mental sharpness of someone twenty years their ...

... it lacks in size, it makes up for with its incredible variety of the weird and the wonderful. Live eels squirm around each other in open tanks, swordfish proudly displaying their swords in the air, are slowly cut away as successive customers place their orders. Buckets of whelks sit next to fresh slimy squid and firm octopus. As I move in to get a closer look the hawkers move in, keen to give me their pitch. They go off on their sales rant, but a ...

... of my cooking, thanking me everyday. As we talk now it feels as if we've known each other for ages.

After a coffee and a shower at his place it's time for dinner.
"What do you want to eat? Pizza?"
"Whatever's going"
We join his friend Tanya and go to eat the best pizza of the city.

It seems so simple, why can't we get it right back home? The crust is thin, but not too crispy, light and fluffy, but not doughy; topped with ...

... hoped we were so long as poor pooper could keep going.
We counted down as each mile passed, and even as we finally arrived in Turin the little pooper was still pulling like a train (all be it a Hornby one).
All we had to do now was negotiate a few more sets if traffic lights and some roundabout's and we would be at our hotel and at the finishing line.
Sitting at the traffic lights Kev tossed and toyed with the local boy racers gunning the engine and slipping ...

... rolled up in Annecy, Kev still at the helm. Annecy was what more like
what we were expecting - there were people! Spot of lunch listening to music to
watch the girls go by was in order.
Annecy, a quaint little backwater, set within the basin of the mountains, with a
pictureques lake, lovely bars and jammed to the rafters with tip top totty - France was
open for business and business was good.
Gary had ...

... down and watching fools play beach soccer was the best medicine. Sitting down at a front row table, though every seat was basically front row because it was a small stadium, us mushy brained tourists watched this event, sun glasses covering our faces foru 4 straight hours. It was absolutely delightful. Something about trying to control a soccer ball on the sand really makes whatever skill you may have slightly obsolete. The grainy, bumpy surface, it a sense levels ...

... br>-re spectful people who appreciated my attempts at Italian, and returned conversation in decent English

-cafes everywhere

-mucho gelato

-"the old with the new" attitude. 2,000 year old buildings next to modern arhictecture.

DISLIKES

-t hey drive like maniacs, and I nearly had off-the-wall heart palpitations every time I crossed a street. I think I’m going to develop ulcers.

-they seem to think food is ...

... I went to two bars at night. I met Ricca's friends who were a bunch of college students. They tried to talk to me in English. They were singing and I recorded that. I had fun. We went to the Red Lion but it was boring. The place was quite characteristic. At 12ish we returned home. Ricca was a little sick. We went straight to bed.

... tour. I'm just not into these things and the
palaces in England are so much grander than this. Whatever.
We kept walking through the streets in Turin. Some buildings are funny.
One of them has a piercing. Another one has cannons left by the French on
the wall. We shopped in one of the shopping street and Sally and I bought shirts
in ...

... Academia (where the David is) and the Ufizzi. The David really is something you have to see in person, it's amazing that someone could carve something so intricate and lifelike out of a block of marble, he really is incredibly beautiful. I'm so astonished with what type of things people can do and find out about paintings with restoration. A lot of the paintings that had been restored had shown multiple layers ...