No secret, I am totally not interested in soccer, or football, or spending time watching any other sports event on TV (besides nude midget wrestling maybe) … but this world cup has a different flavor … Italy and Germany are both strong contenders .. and we have ties to both of them … but we do not really have TV reception … we get RAI 1 … in snowy black and white and the sound seems to be coming from a different radio station … also .. the recent game Germany – Argentinia was not broadcast on non-pay-tv … so .. how did we keep up? Ritsu had BBC.com on her iBook, while I had some German friends giving me the stats online (faster than BBC, thanks again Andy) …
Now the game Italy – Ukraine is on .. and this one is SO easy to follow … just listen to the sound outside .. when Italy got the 2nd goal, all around the house was ‘whhhooaaaaa’ (or however you do that in Italian) … I bet Germany was the same 1 hour ago .. now I fear that if / when Italy wins .. we will get that big partying and honk honk again .. just like Monday.
Now the big question is .. come next Tuesday .. and Italy and Germany have to fight it out .. will it be safe for us to watch the game at some public piazza here ???
[update 0:07 AM] So .. they won .. 3 hours ago .. and now they are still honking outside !!!
[update 1:34 AM] Yep, they are still at it … and I think they got louder over the past hour
Trying to get the little man into the feel for the ball game … well .. he kicks it from time to time .. but prefers using his hands … maybe we need to try outside this weekend … but he loves his oversized t-shirt in German team colors.
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aka “photos my son will hate me for one day”
(Dear son, when you read this one day and someone is making fun of you because of these pics .. realize that they, too, went through this phase … yours is just better documented .. and you look even cute on your potty 
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Since it is pretty warm these days and Julius shows a bit of a heat rash, I give him ample nude time in the evening … with the potty in the middle of the room and constant reminders. Well, first evening did not go so well and he peed on his TV lounge chair …
But next morning, Ritsu noticed by his body language that something was going on, took off the diaper and showed the potty .. and see, #1 and #2 hit the designated target. We will now continue with the target practice and the nude time and see how it goes.
Oh, and the below pics are not from the actual event Even though one pic looks very much like it.
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He has added this way of manipulative communication to his skill set: whining. This is different from his real crying or his anger battle cry when in tantrum mode … this appears to be very much to the point and saying ‘you are bad parents for not letting me pour tea over my brocolli’ … he keeps going, but he never really gets louder .. it also appears as if he is checking in on us as to how we react.
I seriously thought about presenting this video in very contrasty black and white, maybe even using some CGI rain … it is SO SAD
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Yeah, I know, I am some updates behind … but I had Kendo practice again today and see if you can spot me in this video.
This was my 3rd practice session and this time we were like 16 people, including (to my surprise) 3 women fighters. Everyone but me had full armor, which is quite intimidating and also makes it hard for me to see who is who … yes, they all have names on their belt, but I don’t know all the names yet.
Since this was the last session before the summer break, most of us went out for beers afterwards at Comedia Divina, which even has German Hefe Weizen beer on tab. For reasons unknown, the half liter glass is 4€, while the full liter is 8.50€ … not folling that logic.
Seems he is getting into the habbit of cleaning his teeth. While his technique might still be a bit crude, it is great that he knows the concept and that he does it after each meal.
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Turin has 2 main streets: Via Roma and Via Po, the latter ending at Piazza Vittorio Veneto, just across the bridge from Gran Madre. Up until recently this was all a big construction site and parts still are … but finally it feels like a nice space to go and visit one of the nice outdoor restaurants there.
So we made bookings for Porto di Savona, having heard that they serve typical Piemontese food. The only problem this very evening was that Italy just won a soccer game against Australia and cars were driving up and down Via Po, people were dancing in the street and they especially made a lot of noise with these pesky airhorns. I put a video of that up over at youtube.
The noise made any kind of conversation very tricky … but we managed. The food was pretty good, too, and for a seemingly touristy location, teh pricing was reasonable. I had the appetizer platter, which was nice and later I had ordered ‘carne crudo al limone’, thinking I would get something like carpaccio but instead I got a big blob of raw minced meat (enough to make 3 hamburgers) with olive oil and lemon sauce … I also had a tinier version of that already on the appetizer platter … so .. it was a bit on the boring side … but totally my mistake in choice. Ritsu had the ham with melon, which was great and then a piece of trout covered and fried with nut pieces. And Xochitl had a mixed salad and then some really great pasta, of which I believe Julius ate most of.
We saw on a neighbour table a huge portion of octopus salad … it looked very good and I want to try that again next time. We shared 1liter of water and 1 liter of white wine and ended up paying 68€, which is very reasonable.
[update 7/4/06]: We visited this restaurant again and our opinion is going a bit down about this place. First of all, we arrived at 7:12PM and they would not even let us sit outside until their official opening time of 7:30PM.
This time we ordered what we thought was that octopus salad (Finissima di polpo), but it was more like 12 slices of some funky octopus salami (bit hard to describe) … one slice was interesting, but after the second slice it got boring … even though we shared, we only ate half. Adwoa had gnocchi with gorgonzola sauce, Julius had some pretty basic pasta with tomato sauce, I had the novarese, which is a breaded schnitzel the size and shape of one of these old vinyl records, topped with liquid gorgonzola. While it is very tasty and a huge portion, it also gets boring after 3 – 4 bites. No way to finish that either. Oh, the bruscetta at the beginning was fairly nice, but could have had a bit more finesse (garlic maybe?)
We noticed again a fairly large number of tourist eating there. I think it is a good place to bring out of towners … but I doubt we will come back ‘just for the food’
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| For 2 nights Xochitl, one of Ritsu’s old friends, stayed with us and this was a perfect opportunity to hit some of the more obvious tourist attractions. Namely the Mole Antonelliana and the National Museum of Cinema, which is located inside.
I could rephrase all the fascinating facts about both, but I think following the above to links will give you all that info. More interesting is what we thought about it: The elevator ride up is impressive (all glass cabin) and the view from the top is very beautiful (though it was a bit hazy). On a clear day it must be very spectacular. The museum is way more fun than we could have thought and Julius had a blast. He could run around fairly freely and touch lots of things. |
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The center area has these red reclined chairs and they are facing 2 huge screens. All around a smaller screening rooms, all done in very different styles: e.g. for love and romance movies you have to lay on one big plushy round bed, the screen is above you.
[Click for a big panoramic view from Mole.]
There is a living room set, some mad scientists laboratory, a horror movie cave, an old cafe, an American western bar … not sure what that combination of one room (with a big fridge door as entrance but inside you are sitting on 6 toilet seats) was supposed to mean. But it was funny.
Further up then are walkways showcasing all the aspects of movie making and all the way on top is a movie poster gallery, where I found this very interesting Italian version of the old Star Wars poster.
Torino has this fantastic National Cinema Museum which is located in Turin’s signature building, the Mole Antonelliana and since we had an out of town visitor we finally went to check it out.
I have plenty more pictures and maybe some video .. but for now, check out Julius how he is fascinated by one of the table lamps.
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Today is a local holiday here, the ‘Festa di San Giovanni’ and when we tried to see if there is anything going on (food stalls or similar) we found our bridge over the river Po closed to everyone and the option of either going a kilometer up or down the river was not too appealing. Later the traffic around Gran Madre got crazy since there was a firework planned. I had asked when it would start and have been told at 11 PM, but they started like 10 past 10. Since it was very close to our place, I grabbed the camera and looked at the pretties in the sky.
If you listen closely, you can hear that a number of car alarms were triggered by the rockets.
[update 2/2/07] video deleted by youtube .. since someone is sitting on the copyright of the music … and obviously has very limited eyesight when it comes to ‘fair use’ .. I will put up the video again sometime on my own server .. sorry
The little man managed to create a big mess by pouring bubble solution all over himself and mama, so both had to rinse off. Recently Julius objects to bath / shower, so the first 2 minutes (or the whole bath) can be quite a noisy ordeal.
In this case it was ok after a few minutes and he started to enjoy the never ending water drizzle.
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You can also see his bruise on his cheek (yes, we are beating our child, please call social services NOW!) … He was playing carelessly around the dining chairs, climbing up and down and boom, as it happens with little boys…. It will get better.
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Just a quick clip of J-man as he talks to mom on the phone, saying that he really wants to watch “Cars” again. Notice how his eyes move while he is trying to understand just what the heck mommy is saying.
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Last night we went out with a group of Ritsu’s colleagues and discovered this wonderful seafood restaurant which happens to be close by (which means we probably will come back. Soon!)
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Mare Nostrum does seafood only, and we did not get to see a menu (there probably is none). Instead, what appeared to be one of the owners came to our table and described the daily selection (in pretty good English). He was especially praising the 96 kg (212 lbs) of fresh tuna they had just received. [allegedly a 2 m / 6'8" long fish, I was tempted to invade the kitchen to take a pic] |
Since we were nine people we could do a lot of mix and match so that we got to try a bit of everything. We started with some mixed appetizers: Small piece of tuna with some veggie ragout, bite size spada with cheese, a mix of 4 different fried goodies (one of it being sea asparagus, a long baked razor clam and tiny snails in a spicy tomato broth (getting them out was quite some work).
They had 4 types of pasta and just brought some mixed plates so that everyone could try a bit. There was some thick pasta with a spicy sauce which was my favorite. The others were good, down to earth pasta with some sort of seafood on them.
| By then one is actually already full and we should have taken the lead from Ritsu’s boss, who was sharing the main course with his better half.
Ritsu and I both had ordered the grilled tuna with sweet onion chutney and it was just fantastic. It might not look that impressive on this picture … but the slice was over 1″ thick. |
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Only seasoned with mediterranean herbs and then grilled … to die for … pieces way to big (we asked for a doggy bag). Other options were snapper baked in foil, a seafood gratin and #4 which I forgot.
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We had 2 different white wines from Sicily and with desert (which was either zabaione with some rock hard almond-caramel pieces in it, chocolate tart, cherry flan or a panna cotta with fruits) they just dropped some bottles of desert wine on the table … not caring how many times we would fill our glasses.
And since the whole desert / coffee thing took its ‘sweet’ time [pun intended] we all had quite some of that 16% liquid grape sugar thing. |
I had read before (here and here) that this restaurant is quite pricy. And without a menu you have pretty much no idea what you will end up with. But it turned out that we had to pay 50€ each which I found very fair, considering the quantity and quality of food that we had. (I do think we might have gotten a group discount. They rounded the 491€ total down to 450€, which made it very easy for everyone to pay cash)
Looking very much forward to go there again and see what specials they have next time.
Tonight we went to dinner with a bunch of Ritsu’s colleagues and one of them, who happens to live very close to the restaurant we were going, had a baby sitter for his 2 kids and we asked if this baby sitter lady would also take care of Julius and she was ok with that.
We left early so Julius would have some time to get used to a different place and a new baby sitter. He is very clingy today and we feared it would be a drama, but playing with the 6 year old Leon distracted him enough and there was no emergency phonecall while we were eating and when we picked him up he was sound asleep.
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He just loves going out with us after dinner and he knows when we are walking towards the gelato place. By now he has become very independed at eating it, but at least he is sharing some with mama and papa.
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Only a 2.5 – 3h car drive from Turin lies this beautiful coastal area known as Cinque Terre (the 5 lands) [wiki]. As a surprise for our wedding anniversary, Ritsu had discovered a very nice B&B there and all I had to do was get the rental car and follow her driving directions. The second half of the drive seems to be more tunnel than open air as there is a chain of mountains to be crossed.
| Our B&B “L’antico Borgo” is located in Dosso, just up the hill from Levanto, which with its train station is commonly called ‘the portal to Cinque Terre’. While a car is essential to get there and to drive around Levanto and Dosso (very curvous and narrow streets) the 5 villages that create Cinque Terre are pretty much closed to traffic. Instead there is a direct train line (again, mainly cutting through the mountains) and 5.40€ buys you a ticket which is good for the day and also gives you access to the hiking trails between the villages. |  |
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We started with one such trail on Saturday: From the farthest village of Riomaggiore to Manarola. This is a very easy, paved walkway hugging the mountain and it offers spectacular views of the sea. For the crazy among us there are even some access stairs to the cliffs below. This part is very easy to do and kid / stroller friendly. There is even a little cafe along the way which was great for a break. |
We stopped in Manarola for lunch. As you can see from the photo at the top, the people who settled here really tried to optimize the space and they created this box-on-box building style.
After lunch we were crazy couragious enough to continue with the hiking trail. Mainly because it looked like the easy pavement would just go on … but that was an evil deception. After the next curve the pavement stopped and it went up hill. Not too steep, but quite a challange when you are with a neraly 2 year old kid who was not much in the mood for walking and the stroller. But we managed quite well. And again, the views were great. Since the train ride is 95% tunnel, this is the only way to really see anything.
We arrived in Corniglia, but opted to take the train back instead of walking up a 363 step staircase to see the actual village. We were impressed enough to wanting to go back sometime soon and explore the rest. Hopefully when Julius is older and enjoys hiking, we can do the complete trail from Monterosso to Riomaggiore.
| As for our B&B: This is a fantastic place. Very quite and cozy, very friendly people running the place, the breakfast is great. If weather allows you can enjoy breakfast on the balcony (check out the view). Our room was spacious but we did not score one of the ‘view’ rooms .. on the other hand we were very close to the living room / balcony. (read the great reviews they got on tripadvisor) |  |
Of course we took a plethora of pictures and I finally smacked them all together on the 5 panels below. Click for bigger.
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This is what happens when he watches some cartoon with music in it and feels like dancing … on the sofa …
(Music: “Dancing with myself” – Nouvelle Vague. From the album “Bande A Part“. (Yes, it is a cover of that old Billy Idol song)
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Well, not really .. but he has figured out how to correctly drink from regular bottles (without making too big a mess) … here he is enjoying some of daddy’s gatorate … Some day I need to try to capture his face when he is sampling some soda (way too fizzy for him, the face he makes then is priceless)
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We had a bit of a dinner issue on our trip to the Cinque Terre area. Our B&B is in Dosso, which is fairly close to Levanto (as the eagle flies) but for those bound to cars, there are 2 extremely windey and narrow roads each around 15 minutes .. which sounds like a lot of fun if you plan to have a wee bit of wine with dinner.
There was a highly recommended restaurant just 2 minutes from our B&B, but we were not told that for Friday and Satudary a reservation seems to be mandatory.
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So, we had to go down to Levanto and look for a place to eat. We had some recommendations from our B&B people but we looked around in general. We quickly found that many places were very tourist-y .. menu in 4 languages, very basic Italian fare that everyone can easily recognize and tourist pricing. So we kept looking for one recommendation in particular and were very happy to find “Le 3 Cantine”. |
| Unlike most of the other restaurants which face the streets and most of them had soccer on TV, this place is a bit harder to find, at the end of some side alley, up the stairs. On our first visit it was pretty empty at 7:50 PM and getting a seat was very easy. The very nice waiter lady even offered us a bigger table, but stupid me declined, thinking it would get crowded (which it did not on Friday night). |  |
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We also had some nice table neighbours who helped us with identifying some items on the menu … now we know that spada is sword fish. We both ordered this grilled, accompanied with grilled veggies and a ceasar salad (something I have not had in a while and this one was actually very very good). For Julius we ordered some french fries and he was very happy, but he also nibbled on pieces of our fish. The fish was exceptionally great as were the grilled veggies. |
| Heck, even their french fries were perfect.
For desert I had Creme Catalan (basically a creme brulee) and Ritsu had some evil creamy cookie concoction which I forgot to photograph, while I was still drooling over my desert. With the ending coffee came as a nice gesture a small bottle of limoncello and 2 glasses. I don’t think we were supposed to finish this bottle (so we restrained ourselves to 2 small glasses, this stuff is fairly potent) |
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Julius behaved pretty well and when he got antsy towards the end we walked around and explored the kitchen (more friendly staff people there) … also very nice was that the wait lady asked us BEFORE she was about to offer Julius some candy for desert (we said thanks, but NO) |
| After this great experience we just had to come again on Saturday … although we mentioned that the evening before (and they could have told us that we shoudl have a reservation for Saturday) it seems at first that all tables were gone for the night … but they managed to squeeze us in. |  |
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This time around I had the grilled seafood platter and Ritsu went with the tuna in balsamic vinegar. For Julius we had black seafood linguine and we all shared spinach and another ceasar salad. Again everything was fantastic … it was also interesting to see what other people ordered. I.e. the 20€ per person mixed appetizers seems to be a neverending stream of little plates filled with goodies .. I saw one couple having that and then desert. I doubt that after this you can eat much else. |
| They also seem to be doing some great meat dishes. The size of the filet steak is gorgious and it looked fantastic. They also offer some kind of meat fondue.
I was ready to come back for Sunday lunch, but then we thought that we want to see something else. But when we get back I want to return. If you are looking for great food away from the tourist hustle and bustle, this is a great place to go! |
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I am still working on the usual blog backlog after a vacation weekend .. a trip that keeps me away from updating while at the same time I take way too many pictures and we are having way too much fun …
When we left, the place we stayed gave us a promotional CDR with some movie clips on it .. actually these are slide shows about the region, the town and the B&B … since they are in windows media player format (and I try to refrain from adding any M$ software to my new MacBook Pro) I just uploaded them to youtube and here they are:
Cinque Terre
Levanto
L’antico Borgo
Please keep in mind that I did not create these slideshows .. they are using way too many transitions and effects in there .. but I think you can get a pretty good idea.
Thanks for all the nice wishes … we just got back from a nice coastal area called Cinque Terre, where we hiked around and pigged out of fantastic seafood. We stayed at a beatiful Bed & Breakfast called L’antico Borgo, which was just fantastic.
I will hopefully post many updates on this trip (in chronological order, so keep scrolling down from time to time) tonight and tomorrow.
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