Yesterday we headed out around 2 o'clock. There's nothing better than doing nothing all morning and part of the afternoon. I'm not exercising here because the hills would be torture. I'm just trying to settle into "vacation"....chanting nightly Sash.

We decided to stop at the Damilano wine shop and tasting room in the town of Barolo as we had an hour and a half to kill before our appointment at the Renato Ratti winery. The only wine we've had from this producer is our house wine Damilano "Lecinquevigne". It was fun to try some of their other bottles. The gal doing the tasting was great. She kept opening all these older vintages for us. She said she was happy to see a woman drinking with her husband. Apparently they get a lot of European visitors and the women never participate in the tastings. That and the fact that she just returned from the wine expo in Bordeaux where the French shook their heads in disgust at the seven Barolo/Barbaresco wine houses that were there showcasing their best wines. We learned that our house wine needs to be aged for ten years and is worth a great deal of money. Hopefully we served it to you in the past because you sure as hell aren't getting any now. We headed to Ratti and toured the winery then tasted a few of his wines. I wasn't that impressed but we did buy a bottle of their single vineyard Barolo 2009. BTW, this wine that we purchased out of guilt was rated wine of the year by Wine Spectator in 2006. I am getting spoiled out here. The weather is so amazing that we decided to go back to the scene of yesterday's crime, the pool! We hung there and enjoyed our bottle of Ratti. It tasted much better than I remembered from an hour before....must have been the scenery. So, while hanging this school teacher from Pittsburg comes up to us and starts chatting. She proceeds to tell us all about the walking tour she and her art dealer husband are on for the next two weeks. We mentioned that we thought it would be be cool to walk through all of these small towns and eat and drink. To which she quickly replied, "Oh no, we tried that one day and it was just to hard. We're averaging about 10 kilometers a day walking" Hello, that's only about 6 miles. When she finally left, I looked at Ron and said, "Well hell, dad's damn near a cripple and he can walk and drink more than that!" Ron looked at me wide eyed and said, "Cripple? Who says cripple? Seriously babe, you can't say that anymore it's not PC." Me, "It isn't? Who says so?" Ron, "Everyone! I just want to know just how much Soutwestern art that guys selling in Pittsburg to pay for a trip like that. She must have money." Yep, these are the types of conversations we have...not very thought provoking are they? But seriously, why can't I say cripple?

We had dinner at Trattoria Della Posta; Octopus with mashed potatoes, Tajarin with veal ragu and baby lamb with veggies. Tajarin is an egg-yolk rich pasta local to the Piedmont area. Oh and the Grissini!! they are very thin, crisp breadsticks that originated in the Piedmont region of Italy too....delicioso.

Post meal, we decided to head to the pool for a few beers.... totally not necessary but we are vacation after all. I am glad we did because I realized that they do ring the bell at 1:00 AM then again at 1:30. So there really isn't a little man in there every hour. It's automated. Damn it! Kind of takes away from the charm but not by much. To conclude this blog I would like to say that my sweet innocent husband truly is a closet kleptomaniac. It took everything I had to talk him out of stealing the blanket by the pool or as he so eloquently refers to it as "taking a walk!" I may have saved the blanket but I can't say as much for he two plush pool towels.