Our bed and breakfast was located outside the town of Alba, just south of Torino, surrounded by vineyard after vineyard as far as the hills allow you to see! On many of the surrounding hilltops are castles, towers, and manor-type houses that date to medieval times. Many have been added on to throughout the centuries by the nobles who were made rich in this region producing wine. Today, many of them house the local wine acency, and offer tasting and purchasing of the wines from the region - many world famous such as Borolo, Barbaresco, Asti, to name a few.
| It was a perfect day to enjoy the view from this small hilltop town, Diana d'Alba, with the Alps in the distance. And where in the states can your children swing in the yard of a church built in 1673?? It was INCREDIBLY windy up here - they must have a hard time keeping those roof tiles in place! |
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Left is the town center and castle of Borolo. This castle was refinished in the 1800s. Right is the same town as seen from the next hilltop, surrounded by vineyards. We also visited the nearby town of Asti where our favorite sparkling wine is from - and bought a few bottles to bring home! |
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| My Olympic Experience by Glen
Funkhouser We got up at 9 o'clock and left to our hotel called Cascina Barak. At Cascina Barak you could see hundreds of miles of vineyards that go on forever, so they produce tons and tons of wine and it's some of the best wine in the world. Now we're driving to the freeestyle skiing area. It isn't what you think it is. It's people making their skis make an "x" then turn sideways and then spin. Sometimes they would twist or flip. Do you know the mascots of the Olympics, the Paralympics? The mascots of the Olympics are Neve and Gliz, or snow and ice. The mascot of the paralympics is Aster or snow crystal. So now that you know about the mascots and about freestyle skiing let's move on to hockey. They had a pretty cool hockey stadium. There's a lot of penalties in hockey. USA vs. Kazakhstan, guess who won? USA! We beat them 4 to 1. I forget who scored, I think Tkchuk scored a goal. Now on to the skeleton. People are going roughly 75 mph. We didn't do as good in the skeleton as we did in skiing and in hockey. Overall we had a great time at the Olympics! |
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