(Torino, Italy)

My last two days in Italy were blessed by brilliant sunshine. The first, in Sestriere, was a rather unplanned day off the slopes…but I did enjoy exploring the town and indulging in some local pastries.

Sestriere is a “purpose-built” resort with an unusually high number of cylindrical buildings. Not much character, then, but looking up into the surrounding gleaming mountains does compensate somewhat for the lack of history.  There was an unexpected fireworks display on the last night:  although it is difficult to capture it on camera, it really was impressive to see the fireworks reflecting off the white snow.

We traveled to Turin (Torino) for the final full day in Italy.  I was expecting a city similar to Milan, but I found Turin to be a little more accessible.  There were more affordable indulgences and more elegant architecture:  many streets had arcades to shield you from the sun…something I didn’t see much in the more commercial and hectic Milan.  In a nutshell:  there were lots of appealing opportunities for gelato, pastries and focaccia!  It was only March 19, but for lunch we were able to eat our pizza outdoors.

Dinner was a special treat.  We found a “locals only” restaurant a few streets away from our hotel.  It was family run:  the parents were running the show and the (adult) children were handling the customers.  After 12 days in Italy, I was feeling bold enough to do all of the ordering in Italian.  This was partially out of necessity:  there was no English menu here.  We also lived on the edge, as we didn’t necessarily know what we were ordering. I knew enough Italian to avoid trippa (tripe) and our appetizer of insalata verde (green salad) was obvious enough…but we didn’t truly know what would show up for our main courses.   No worries – our pasta dishes were delicious and we had lots of the real parmigiano reggiano cheese to go with them.

For dessert, we took an even more daring approach.  Reasoning that the most expensive dessert would also be the best, we threw caution to the wind and ordered the mysteriously-named (so mysterious that I cannot remember it) house specialty.  Great call:  we enjoyed a phenomenal dessert with hazelnut liqueur and dark chocolate in various forms.  How much did we enjoy dinner? I completely forgot to take pictures of the food!

While we were only there for about a day, we left with a very positive impression of Turin…even if that was based mostly on the food.  The only negative was that people seemed to smoke a lot here:  no smoking was permitted inside but some of the more crowded areas downtown were a little unpleasant after being in the fresh air of the Cinque Terre and the Italian Alps for nearly two weeks.

Thus endeth another Italian ski adventure.  On our last night in Sestriere, we had a meeting and decided on the venues for next year’s ski camp.  I’ll keep it a secret for now…however, given how much we enjoyed Cortina d’Ampezzo and Val Gardena, I am reasonably certain that next year’s choices (in two different countries) will be great as well.

Stay tuned for some Canadian content!