Living in a Postcard

I hope you had a good weekend because mine was great!

Turin is the site of the 2006 winter games, the discovery of this weekend was why it is considered an appropriately picturesque location.

The weather had been both rainy and cloudy on Saturday. On Sunday, we went to the park which is up a hill, when the sun came out and we saw the Alps. I felt like we had just stepped into a postcard! There were places where you didn't know where the mountains stopped and the sky began, but the rest of the Alps could clearly be seen as snowy mountains and grassy slopes. I felt like Heidi was going to appear any minute and start yodelling with lonely goatherds.

Then we went to a restaurant above the Piazza Grand Madre (where our original first choice tiny appartment was) and had this "carne a la pietro" which is essentially beef served on a hot stone. You can order the local wine in a demi-carafe (about half a regular bottle). It costs 4 Euros or about the same as one glass of wine in Singapore. After dinner, we went to a bar for coffee. You can go to a pub or bar here and order hot beverages instead of wine or beer. The local speciality is chocolate. Apparently Turin has more master chocolatiers than either France or Belgium! So when you go into a bar and order hot chocolate, you get stuff you can literally stand a spoon in. It is so thick and creamy that me and Fabien take all night to finish a tiny little cup. It is especially addictive when the weather is 7 degrees outside at night, and you can see your breath.