Alessandria

A 3 hour trip ( no autostrada for me) for the 200 odd kms to Alessandria. Once you leave the Aosta Valley, and head into the province of Piedmont, the country side really does start to flatten out. Piedmont literally means at the foot (pied) of the mountain (mont). Look at that, a free linguistics lesson ✏. Not too much to say about the road except that there are a lot of rice fields in this part of Italy. I stopped off in Casale Monferrato which is the area Dad was born and sent a pic to my mom and sister while I was there.

Alessandria, again, is a typical Italian regional city with great architecture. Fun to walk around for the afternoon after booking into a very nice, for the price, hotel with safe and secure underground parking for the bike. Europeans, including Italians, are generous and very friendly people but there is a percentage of the population that would steal the skin off 5 day old milk. But then again you can say that about every country!!!!!!! Why are there two sinks in the hotel bathroom? The second one is so low to the ground it's very hard to use!!!!

I did say I was going to fast for at least 24 hours before eatng solidly for the 5/6 days of staying with relatives. The hot chocolate and pannini was too much of a temptation.

Right, next stop will be 5 days of talking, eating, sleeping, eating, sightseeing, eating, and then to finish off...more eating.

Asti here I come (ohh, and my relatives don't even know I'm in the country let alone that I'm going to visit and stay for a while. They will be (pleasantly?) surprised 😲Read more