Piedmonte, Italy - wine and truffle country

After a wonderful 4 days in Cannes, France, we headed out again in our Quashquai rental car and started the 5 hour drive to Piedmonte Italy. The drive was beautiful! We stopped at on of the Auto Grilles and tried an Italian flavor of Pringles - Rosemary and Olive Oil. 

Welcome to Piedmonte! 

When we arrived, I fell in love with this region. Each big wine type we have learned about and really enjoyed is a town on top of a hill in this region. As you look out at the view you see the town and grapes of Borolo, Barbaresco, Diano d'Alba, and many more!

We stayed in the town of Alba at a hotel called I Castelli. The rooms were huge in this hotel and it was a decent price with good access to the main city and also good access to drive to the hilltop towns nearby.

The homes in this area were much nicer and larger than the rest of the areas we visited in Italy. 

But there were still gorgeous historic castles and history in this region as well. 

Our favorite thing that we learned about this region is that it is truffle country!! We went out to dinner on our first night and got tajarin egg pasta with black truffles. One bite and we felt like we died and went to heaven, this stuff is THAT good!! And if they offer you truffles, go for it!! It was 12 additional euros to get our pasta topped with them, but they are delicious! They aren't like the typical truffle oil that most american restaurants offer. It is a totally different experience! It unfortunately wasn't truffle season so all they had were black truffles. My dream is to come back to Italy in September during the grape harvest season, and to try fresh white truffles!!

The next day we headed out to go wine tasting at some of the enoteca's at the top of each hill town. Each town has a special Enoteca Regionali or regional wine store that features all of the different wines produced in that town and also some information about the terroir and various facts about what makes their grapes different from other towns. You can do a tasting at each one and try anywhere from 2-5 wines. 

Our first town we stopped in was Barbaresco.

The wines here are meant to be aged for 10-20 years or more for optimal taste! 

After Barbaresco we traveled to a few other towns.. Mango, and Barolo, but their Enoteca's were closed so we stopped at a little restaurant/osteria and took in the views with a snack and a glass of their white wine.

I love this shot I got of a woodpile outside of someone's home. So perfectly stacked. 

Check out this old wine press!

This is archway is outside of the Enoteca in Borolo. 

Spring and sunsets!

One of the highest elevation towns we went to was Diano d' Alba. They had a beautiful church at the very top and gorgeous views of the other hilltop towns. 

The manager at this Enoteca was awesome! He spoke English really well so we were able to communicate with him more than any of the other shops. They had a really wide selection of wines to try here and we found some great varietals that were delicious from this region. Their whites were really good too.

On our way down the hill, I asked Garrett to stop at this motel/restaurant that I had been eyeing on all of the brochures throughout town. It has an outdoor swimming pool and 5 star restaurant and views of Borolo in the distance. I fell in love and when we come back, this is where I want to stay!

The weather in Piedmont was perfect! The warmest weather we experienced on our whole trip. 

Through the circle in the fence in the photo below you can see the castle of Borolo. 

Garrett was relaxed! I think this is what happens when you are on your third week of vacation, sitting poolside!

Oh Piedmonte! Someday we will meet again!

Next stop on our trip... Venice! 

Ciao!

Traveling to Cannes, France - a great beach town destination!

After traveling in Italy for two weeks, we headed over to France to get a little culture change for a while. We were ready for some different cuisines besides Italian and also to relax on the beach for a couple of days. We thought about staying in Savona Italy on our way to France. Garrett found a cool hotel on the beach there, so we entered that into our GPS and headed to the beach! When we got there, the whole town seemed really industrial and not at all what we were expecting, so we decided to just continue on driving to France. 

We ran into a couple of things that we didn't think about though... we didn't really research how to drive in France and we also didn't have a French sim card so our phones (which we were using to navigate) wouldn't work for us. So... with spotty cell coverage before we crossed over the border, I tried to find us a hotel to stay at and also to memorize how to get there! I found a hotel called "Hotel America"  (how risky of us! lol.) in Cannes, it was the closest one to the beach I could find that was a decent price and looked really nice inside. When we crossed the border, we lost service and were on our own. 

The toll stations were totally different as well as the road signs so Garrett had to learn everything over again! But we made it there without getting lost. 

I loved the look and feel of our room with the book wall paper. 

When we pulled up to the hotel, they had us park on the sidewalk while we got checked in. The street our hotel was on was really cute too.

Cannes was truly a beautiful and relaxing beach town. They have fabulous shopping and a lot of restaurants to choose from! And the beach, marina and yachts were gorgeous!

This was the view from our hotel room window. 

After we checked into our hotel and we explored the town a bit and got a bite to eat at one of the hotel beach restaurants. 

I love ranunculus flowers and the grow them all over France and Italy.

For dinner we were craving something besides Italian food so we found a fun, but touristy restaurant that had a hamburger and fries for Garrett, his favorite. I got a fried goat cheese saled and salmon tartare. YUM! I also got fries with my meal and for some reason, the way they cooked them, they were the best fries we have ever had. The oil and salt that they used is so flavorful.

On our second day, we rented some beach chairs for about 40 Euros for the day. A bit pricey, but well worth it for the total relaxation. The weather was hot and views pristine. :)

Cannes public beach

Maxin and relaxin! We tried real champagne since we were in France! All the locals would show up and drink champagne at the beach, so we thought we would try to fit in. 

Garrett has some French in his family heritage and you could totally tell. He looked just like a lot of the young  men in the south of France.

Beautiful Macaroons 

The marina's in Cannes were full of the most gorgeous yachts and sailboats from all over the world. It was so fun to be able to walk through the marina and read all of the boat names and where they were from. 

Lovely draping purple flowers.

So we were traveling at kind of an awkward time in Europe. The hotels either have their heat on or their air conditioning on, but they can't switch to the other one unless the service guys comes to do it. So for the first two weeks of our trip, we hardly slept because our hotel rooms were SO hot. We were so excited to see the air conditioning truck outside of our hotel after a long day at the beach!

On our last morning, we went and checked out the Forville Market. I believe this is where many of the local restaurants go to get their produce and dairy. We bought some fun salts to bring back home.

Our next stop is Piedmont, Italy! Another wine country area. 

Au revoir!