August 9th, 2007

2:30 – on the train to Turin.

Today is a traveling day. We started off today by me going to the train station about 8:30 to buy tickets. We were planning on the 10:00 train but took the 12:30 because it worked out better and was half price.

So now I am on the 12:30 train to Turin, then we will take another train to Ivrea where Tom lives. We will be staying with him for 2 days. We are headed towards the mountains. Hopefully it will be cooler there and have different food.

Well, that’s it… not much interesting so far. Laterz.

11:30 pm – sitting in bed at Tom’s House

Well the train was uneventful. We arrived in Ivrea at 6:30 and Tom met us. He is our age and works as a waiter at a private club. He is a really nice guy and a lot of fun to hang out with. He took us home from the train station and his mom met us and was very motherly. She is so much fun! She immediately went into mama mode and started offering us food and drink. She is very much like my mama who is happiest when serving others. Even though her son said we had enough food, she kept bringing it out and a snack turned into almost a full meal!

The interesting part is the food she offered us. She brought us out a plate of salami slices and also slices of white stuff. Yah, the white stuff turned out to be… umm…. Bacon. Without the meat. Yep. Slices of fat. Mmmm… And as before, we believe in eating what is put in front of you so we each had a slice. Also included in the snack was rice cakes (to offset the meatless bacon), olives (Bwige loved them) breadsticks, and yummy cheese.

Afterwards, Tom took us out on the town. We went and saw where he works. It’s a private club (not for rich people) where you have to wait a long time to get in because it is small. They have a little lake and their own private view of the mountains. Very nice!

Then, he took us into the mountains a bit for his favorite place to eat, the Sostos. Basically, it means a stop for the pilgrims (who used to take that road on the way to Rome).

The restaurant was a very homey place. Very tastey. We got a plate of cheeses for the appitiser. It came out with three different slices of cheese on it (real slices which come from a round of cheese not pathetic American slices which are flat and disgusting). One was small and hard, not bad. Another was bigger and white, very tastey. The last cheese was the biggest and was filled with spices.

(this will be finished later)