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His ‘other’ girlfriend has returned from a summer stay at her grandma’s house in Breccia … it took them like 2 minutes to warm up again … and then is was the usual kids’ chaos … only this time they were roaming inside and outside … which includes 2 traffic heavy streets … so .. most of my eating was done walking around checking on under which cars they might be…

Food was as usual great and I really love their new sushi menu … which makes them teh best and cheapest sushi place in town!

Ritsu had visited this place 2 weeks prior as part of a work lunch and recommended it highly … so today we went.

Very nice setting … a huge appetizer buffet greeting you at the entrance … and I really loved the food.

I think this must have been the best presentation (and thus also yummiest) of the regional specialty ‘carne cruda’ (yeps, it is basically mined meat nicely fixed up & also extremely generous, I’d say enough to make 4 decent hamburgers) … But the key, as with sushi, is that it has to be super fresh!!!

Ritsu had the sword fish carpaccio with funghi and then later some very nice seafood pasta (which Julius ate most of, but he tried a bit of everything else.)

Though I had ordered only a half liter carrafe of white wine, we got a whole bottle .. but at the silly prices for wine in Italian restaurants, it did not make much of a difference …

For dessert we both went with the frutti di bosco on gelato … nice …

Though Julius was a tad tired and antsy and in general not on his best side this whole weekend … he was surprisingly behaved in this restaurant setting .. I guess he has just seen too many already and he just knows how it goes … (and he LOVES the bread baskets that come early on.)

Also noteworthy that they did NOT charge coperto for Julius (nowadays it becomes more common, well .. he is not a baby anymore) and they have a daily changing menu … we initially got the one from the day before, but as it had turned out they had run out of fresh tuna, but lucky for us, the had fresh spada (sword fish)

RISTORANTE LA PACE,
Via Galliari Bernardino, 22
TORINO, 10100, Italy.
Phone:+39 (011) 6507102

On one of the last school functions (still unblogged, shame on me) I learned that Julius has to special friends who he constantly hangs out with: Ogarit & Costanza (yep, both girls). And Ogarit (whose parents are Lebanese and Italian) also is on the same school bus.

The last 2 weeks she was absent (probably some early vacation) but Monday she was on the bus again, and as soon as Julius saw her he shouted her name in excitement.

And funny thing today, Ogarit was sitting in the front row with some other girl in the kids’ seats, so Julius had to sit in the row behind … and Ogarit said something in Italian to the driver and started getting her seatbelt off … 2 minutes later she was sitting next to her Julius and they were very happy.

After summer I will try to set up some play dates, both parents speak some English, so it should be fun!

It has been a very long time since I had been to a live music performance .. and probably the first we dragged Julius to as well.

But more important than the actual performance was for Julius to make new friends … and he found that in the 6 year old Matteo (or however you spell that in Italian) .. they both had a fun time and were later so fascinated by the performance that they would sit together holding hands … very cute.

The show itself was great … open air .. so no sweating when the dancing started … very nice Brazilian music … you can google around and find quite some stuff on youtube … Julius fell happily asleep in the stroller (which we had not used in about a year)

Vanessa Da Mata on wikipedia and youtube.

They had those nifty t-shirts at PAM for just 1.99€ … i could not resist … I am still wondering if there is a typo or if the dates are wrong …

You might wonder what this is about .. here some helpful links: wikipedia, FAQ on geocaching.com …

It basically is a fun ‘treasure’ hunt utilizing modern technologies like the internet and a GPS navigator.

I thought it would be a great outdoor thing to do as a family and indeed, it works pretty well … we headed up the hill to the Superga and followed down a path into the woods (while very nice, it is incredible how littered that area was .. from condom wrappers to panties we saw pretty much everything)

We found the well hidden cache, inspected it, logged our visit, took a little dice out for Julius and put some foreign coins in …

Some mountain bike lady who had some trouble getting up that path was very curious what we were doing … We then spend some extra time on a beautiful lawn just below the Superga.

Now we will look around what else we find around here … and then of course plan for our summer trip!

And Ritsu is very excited about making our own cache .. we shall see where we can hide one.

We went up to the Superga to start the new family hobby of geocaching (too bad .. we did not find the one that we were looking for, thanks to swarms of mosquitos bugging us and cutting our patience short)

Afterwards we went to a small trattoria close by for lunch .. and it was very nice.

The tricky part was that they don’t have a menu … it is all done by talking .. in Italian … great challenge .. but I think we faired fairly well. Julius was already happy with his bread.

We had a small ham on corn bread appetizer with a sip of white wine … then we all had pasta dishes which were just lovely.

For dessert I had zabaglione, freshly made (which is kinda rare … most restaurants have some pre-made zabaglione cream instead) and Ritsu had the bavarese with frutti di bosco (in syrup form)

Big surprise was that there was no coperto on the check (even though we had a free appetizer and a free mini wine) and overall for 36€, that was a pretty sweet deal.

We inspected with interest the appetizers that other tables had, most of them looked very cheesy, maybe something to try when it gets colder … and we still have no idea what their main dishes may be like … but all those slow food stickers on the door must be a good sign.

On a totally different note … our eyes kept popping out when we saw on our neighbor table that the 2 kids of the family, aged 10 and 13 (rough estimate) were drinking red wine just like the grown ups with them … ah .. different cultures …

BEL DEUIT
Via Superga 58 – Baldissero Torinese
Tel.: 011 9431719
Closed on:: Wednesday and Thursday (lunch)

gee .. there is even something on youtube

Finally we returned to Mare Nostrum for our 5th visit (while counting we found that Ritsu had been there one time in a job function without me .. so it was her 6th time) Luckily Alice had time to take care of Julius and the little guy was very happy about his date and enjoyed his ice-cream (which he got after he had eaten all the peas and all the fish on his plate)

We had reservations last months, which was cancelled last minute because of a very important soccer game … I rubbed that into the manager’s nose … but besides another ’sorry’ there was no further action .. I had anticipated maybe a free dessert or a bottle of wine … but on to the food: Again we skipped the appetizers and headed straight for the pasta: Rigatoni with shrimp and aubergine for Ritsu and I had fussili with spicy anchovy sauce … both very good.

Then we were very happy to hear that they have the raw seafood platter again … exactly what I was in the mood for. (Click here to see everything they offered tonight.)

2 different kinds of very fresh fish tartar and 3 different kinds of crustaceans, all raw and super fresh … it was extremely yummy.

For dessert we both selected the frutti di bosco covered in zabaglione cream … very good.

Overall another success and we managed to stay under 100€ (barely) … I think I was a tad disappointed that after we had encountered surprise discounts and freebie wine bottles … this time, even though there was a good reason .. there was nothing of that … but again .. the food was outstanding !!!

I bought this monster of a watermelon today (6 kg .. the smallest they had, had to cut it in half to fit it into he fridge .. gladly is was only 18c a kilo .. unlike my neighborhood supermarket, still charging 69c per kg)

And Julius had quite some fun with it:

I guess tomorrow I will try to make watermelon juice

… he just can’t resist when he sees running water somewhere.

The afternoon was beautiful and Ritsu had come home from work early, so we all took a stroll up the hill to Monte dei Cappuccini, where we heard they were also setting up for some concert later that evening (9:30 PM … too late for Julius, but we might try again next Monday and bring a stroller)

But we got beautiful sunshine views from the top and the band was already rehearsing. which gave the whole setting an extra nice atmosphere.

But Julius was most impressed by this water fountain and gladly he brought his yellow balloon.

(These are probably the last photos with my Fuji Finepix F50, which I have dragged for 9 months and 6000 exposures all across the planet, including the sands of Wadi Rum … It is kinda understandable that after this much use / abuse I am now getting a ‘lens control error’ … )