Playing Tour Guide

I may have lived in Italy for over three months, but this is a whole new country.  It's amazing what moving to a new neighbourhood can do.  In this new part of town, people greet me with smiles and bend over backwards to help.  My upstairs neighbours chat whenever they see me, the guys downstairs flash devilish grins and twinkling blue eyes with typical Continental charm whenever we attempt to communicate in broken languages, and the nonna on the ground floor kindly converses with us insisting we must speak Italian; therefore we have no idea what she's talking about.

Up the road is a fantastic fruit and vegetable market, a pastry shop which creates hazelnut maccarons to die for, jovial butcher who sells perfect meat and an enoteca which produces all their own wines for fair prices.  It's like living in a whole new Italy, and one easy to embrace with open arms.

Which is the perfect timing for friends to arrive.  The first is another Vancouverite who opted for the first intake of the masters in Colorno, and who I met through mutual friends three days before she left.  Really, we knew very little about each other when she showed up in Bra bearing Lambrusco and a huge piece of parmigiano reggiano, but this friend's a keeper.

She sat in on a memorable beer tasting class,

Cascade hops

and graced several uproarious dinner parties as we celebrated our new pad.  We explored the outer limits of the tasting menu at Osteria Boccondivino (Bra's official Slow Food restaurant),

view from the osteria

and then rode bikes to Alba to binge on truffle paraphernalia.

While excited to leave for our first international study trip to Burgundy, it was a too-short weekend.

Street drumming competition on Via Cavour
over Saturday night Nebbiolo