A Man Without a Belly is Like a Sky Without Stars

I’m not sure what exactly it means, but it’s an Italian idiom Enrico taught us at dinner tonight.

A flat stretch out of Alba this morning was enough to make me realize that my legs were feeling the previous four days worth of riding.  The road didn’t stay flat for long as we headed for La Morra.  In a 5 mile stretch we gained 900 ft and my legs felt like they were going to explode.  It was somewhere in the midst of the climb that I briefly questioned my vacation choice and then berated myself for not enjoying beach vacations like normal people.  Thankfully, successfully arriving at the top of climb afforded some amount of accomplishment and I was again thankful to be riding my bike in Italy.  From the top of the climb we could see most of the Le Langhe region and all of the surrounding vineyards. 

After a short trip back on the bike we stopped at Enoteca Reggionale del Barolo for a brief lesson on Barolo wines and wine tasting.  Honestly, I was too wiped out from the previous days to remember any pertinent points from the lesson.

After a few more kilometers of riding we stopped for a truffle hunting lesson from Carlito and his dog, Lara.  Things I learned during this lesson: white truffles = good, black truffles = not so good, dog = amazing, don’t buy truffles at the truffle fair (it’s a way to overcharge tourists).  Carlito buried some truffles in the ground to show us how he and Lara hunt for them.  It was amazing- the dog is trained not to continue digging once finding the truffle as it may ruin the precious find.  Truffles occur spontaneously in the soil (so far there is no known way to cultivate them) and they form a symbiotic relationship with the tree roots.  They are a fungi, not a tuber and grow underground.  The truffle finding hobby gets pretty competitive in the region as locals are known for poisoning and killing other hunter’s dogs.  Hunters keep maps of areas to mark where they have found truffles in the past and these maps and guides are often handed down within families.

After remounting the bikes, it was a relatively benign trip back to Alba with a few rolling hills.

After a quick shower we hit the town for a guided tour of Alba.  Apparently most of the town was closed today- not sure if closures on Monday is an Italian thing or what, but thankfully I managed to find a store with torrino (Tower? Either Emily or Google Translate is using the wrong word here, and I’m not sure which it is.) torrone, which I promised to bring back to the states.  The town has so much history, but I’ll spare some of the details because I’m tired and most readers (which happens to be my family) probably won’t be too interested.  We stopped inside a church dating back to somewhere around 900 AD.  The towers were black and white checkered because the Dominican order ran the church- something to the effect of black and white for the order and wanting some decoration without being overly elaborate (the English of the tour guide was a little difficult to understand at times, but the tour was really good).

After the tour we met up again for pizza night, which was absolutely fantastic!  Erica, trying out her new Italian sign language, managed to offend the owner- who then pretended to spill an espresso on her.  I sat next to Scott, an author and entrepreneur, who described to me the process of finding an agent, getting an editor and writing a book- a fascinating and overwhelming sounding process.

Because of her encounter with Paullini the magician, Kira was awarded the capalleni.  Although Kira didn’t find the magician’s foam ball trick hilarious (it was not PG rated), the rest of us did.

The people on this trip are absolutely fantastic, we are all having such  good time and spend most of our time laughing.  I feel so lucky to have gotten to spend my vacation with this crazy bunch!

More pictures to add, but I’m tired and tomorrow is the longest biking day of the trip…