Qualcosa da mangiare

By the time I post this, I will back home in New York (on the plane now), but no roving reporter worth her salt would go to Italy and not post something about food, davvero?

Our find on this particular trip was a ubiquitous item, but new to us: bugie (BOO-gee-ay). Bugie are sheets of crisp pastry sprinkled with powdered sugar. They're usually a bit rippled from air bubbles, especially the best ones. They're sold in most supermarkets; in fact, I discovered them because the man behind the meat counter put some in a bag and told me I needed to try them. They're also pretty cheap, about 1€ per a bag that provides a generous coffee snack for four. But the best ones we ate this week came from a paneficcio (bread store) on the hill on the other side of the river in Turin, the same hill I wrote about in my last post. I also picked up a pizza with prosciutto for lunch and some rolls for the next morning's breakfast.

Bugie!

Breakfast rolls, each spiraled in a different direction

Just down the hill from the paneficcio, we had seen well-dressed women in a pastaficcio (a pasta store) buying things for dinner. I saw the line as a sign of popularity and decided to stop in on the way back to buy something. CZ and I quickly agreed on some spinach gnocchetti, and I was pleased when the woman behind the counter confirmed my choice of walnut sauce to go with it. I make walnut sauce at home, but this was way better!

Spinach gnocchetti, before cooking and being tossed with walnut sauce

So CZ and I had a entire day's worth of groceries, all delicious, as it turned out, and requiring minimal preparation, but not nearly as expensive as eating on a restaurant. Abbiamo mangiato bene!


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Roving Reporter Post 2

CZ and I have been walking all over the city of Turin today, getting the lay of the land. We took off after breakfast and started walking. We started out near Porta Susa train station and walked towards the Duomo.

At the Duomo, which is where the Shroud of Turin is kept (almost always under a shroud of its own), we were practically commandeered by two old men, some sort of docents, who wanted to explain the Shroud to us in great detail, give us brochures about it, explain some restoration in progress after a fire in the chapel where the Shroud was kept (I think), and point out the offering box. Every word of this was in rapid Italian, only about two-thirds of which I understood, but they seemed delighted that we could understand any of it. They were so enthusiastic that we felt it would be rude not to listen. It really became rather funny, because we'd think they were finished, but back they'd come with some more material or explanation! We noticed, too, that the Duomo in Turin was one of the few places we saw people who looked like they were actually there to worship. We really didn't see tourists wandering around with cameras.

In the area of the Duomo we also found what looked like an old Roman wall (with medieval renovations) called the Porta Palatina, the Palazzo Reale, an enormous square with long views in three directions, the Palazzo Madama, and the Teatro Regio, where operas are performed.


About those long views: Turin is a very Baroque city with straight avenues and lots of grand buildings with ornate windows. It's more like light-colored, elegant Paris than dark, earthy Renaissance Tuscany. Many of the streets, which are all cobblestone, are lined with porticos. There are tiny vendor spaces inside some of the columns along the porticos. And to keep the grid from becoming boring, every so often the streets open up into a vast square. And you need this variety, because unlike gridded NYC, there's not a single tree along any street.


We kept walking down the via Po towards the river, over the bridge, and straight up a long hill on the other side and into a residential neighborhood.
CZ just kept going, past all the appetizing pasticcerias and pizzerias and a place that sold homemade pasta. At one point I called after her, "Where are you going? We can't see the entire city, you know! It's much too big!"

"Not with that attitude, we won't!" she shouted back.

We kept going up 'til we got to a place where there were no sidewalks, turned a corner, and rounded past some apartments. There, beyond a fence, was a panoramic view of the entire city. CZ felt justified. The white we saw all along the horizon wasn't more clouds rolling in. It was all snow--on the Alps.


On the way back, we did stop in the pasta store and a pasticceria. But that's the next post.

Location:Torino, Italia

Roving reporter post, from a train

CZ and I are on a train to Turin, from Milan. It's gray, raining, and bleak out, but warm. We're on a commuter train, but we have luggage, so we're sitting in the wheelchair seats where there's room. The porter said it was okay.

We're going to talk to people in Turin about their conservatory. The people a few seats over are discussing how the program works, and I wish I could understand them better. I love the accents.

My Italian is getting a workout. I'm getting over the fact that my grammar is laughable and my pride in the fact that I think I should be able to speak with a better accent than comes out at any given time. My favorite combination in conversation is to speak with an Italian who speaks some English, but not too well (this is most Italians who speak English). That way I can try to speak Italian until I get stuck, but then I have the luxury of punting. This is how I learned the word for "expire" yesterday--It's scadenza. I was trying to buy minutes for our Italian phones.

We're still a bit jet-lagged. It's 3:30 a.m. EST. We've been here twenty-four hours. But I things are going well and I am quite pleased to be able to write a blog post on a train in Italy.

And though it may sound shallow, I must admit it--the Italians dress much better than we do, and the coffee! Mamma Mia! I'd love another about now...

Ciao!

Location:Non lo so esattamente

Something new

Bob got an iPad for his business trips and left it home today for me to figure out how it works. Here's one of the things I discovered:



I made this using a .99 app called Penultimate. You write on a notepad with your finger. I really like the way iPad and iPhone allow for you to "draw." My only problem with this app is that I can't seem to write small enough to get much on a page. (You can also buy a special stylus.) But it's pretty fun, don't you think?

I may try to blog our next trip a bit on-the-go. But I do suppose that will require me to wait until the business day is over so I can use this nifty device. Still, it's a pretty good setup, I think!

(I also wrote this post on the iPad, using a blogging app. The app is pretty much necessary if you want to post photos.)