Category Archives: Piemonte

Licensed to Ill: driving your teenage roads, twelve years on.

Posted on November 27, 2016 by

Unlike many of my peers, I wasn’t given a car as a birthday present when I turned 18. Publicly I was saying I didn’t want it but I knew it was a case of fox and grapes with a numberplate, … Continue reading →

Posted in Europe, Italy, Piemonte | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 8 Comments

Modern art

Posted on July 14, 2016 by

I don’t often go to modern art fairs, mainly because I don’t get it at all, and I have a tendency to express scorn and not-so-educated scathing comments  out loud when everyone else is silent (it’s a family gift, Dad … Continue reading →

Posted in Europe, Italy, Piemonte | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 8 Comments

Where the woods are returning.

Posted on May 16, 2016 by

On paper, it was an easy ride. About 9 klicks, roughly 600 meters in elevation, and a smooth return to the waiting car, through the woods, up the ridge and then back again into the woods. The signs at the … Continue reading →

Posted in Europe, Italy, Piemonte | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 8 Comments

“It’s all they’re asking these days”.

Posted on April 24, 2016 by

“Is it organic?” The scorn, on Alberto’s face, was evident. “These days they don’t even check if the wine’s good or not, if it isn’t organic no one wants to give a euro for it”. We scanned the view from … Continue reading →

Posted in Europe, Italy, Piemonte | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | 6 Comments

A rowing regatta

Posted on November 10, 2015 by

The stretch of the Po river that flows past the city of Turin, in Northwest Italy, is normally quiet: a few rowers, two boats doing a sort of public shuttle service, countless ducks and swans. This weekend, though, things were … Continue reading →

Posted in Europe, Italy, Piemonte | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

The alpine tunnel for the afterlife.

Posted on April 21, 2015 by

It wasn’t supposed to be dug this high. The idea, originally, was for the tunnel to be at least 400 meters lower, at an easier 1000 meters of altitude, where it could’ve been used almost all year round, but that … Continue reading →

Posted in Europe, Italy, Piemonte | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 4 Comments

Out of season, again.

Posted on April 16, 2015 by

This is the second and last post of a series that I dedicated to mountain villages caught in the ‘low season’, when tourists have already gone or aren’t there yet. In the first post I visited Gaby, a village in the Lys … Continue reading →

Posted in Europe, Italy, Piemonte | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Out of season.

Posted on April 15, 2015 by

We visit them from December to Easter and from June to August. In the meantime, mountain villages slip out of the back of our minds, into a limbo where we rarely, if ever, venture. What happens up there, when we’re … Continue reading →

Posted in Europe, Italy, Overlooked locations, Piemonte | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Memories of a place I’m missing

Posted on March 8, 2015 by

Surfing through the Internet a little ago, I found out that a gigantic (well, at least for Italian standards) skyscraper has mushroomed out of a disused industrial area in Torino, Italy. The area, known as ex Fiat Avio (Fiat Avio, an aerospace … Continue reading →

Posted in Europe, Italy, Piemonte, Random memories | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

A quick hike in the Alps

Posted on December 24, 2014 by

It’s been a strange winter, so far, in the Alps. It’s mild, warm, rainy instead of being snowy. So, when an opportunity came to go for a quick hike on the massive slope leading up to the Mucrone mount, a … Continue reading →

Posted in Europe, Italy, Piemonte, The world from above | Tagged , , | 5 Comments