Boves is a tiny town in the Piedmont region of Italy. Piedmont is surrounded by the Italian Alps and borders both Switzerland and France. It is mainly an agricultural region, known for its wine [mmmm] and rice. The second one surprised me - if you'd asked me before my trip, I would have told you that Italy doesn't grow rice. But they do. Lots of it! The flooded fields are very pretty, especially when reflecting the golden glow and rosy warmth of a sunset.
Our family friends have lived there forever. Bruna and Erio and their two daughters, Sylvia and Elena [ELLE-enn-ah], first stayed with our family in ... 1992? We were living in Whitehorse, Yukon at the time and my parents ran a bed and breakfast called The Mossberry Inn [moss berries grow in colder climates - they're blue, and relatively tasteless but my mom made the most incredible moss berry pie!]. Their girls are about ten years older than the kids in our family, so a few years later, when Sylvia was in her mid-teens, she came to spend the summer with our family to improve her English. I have some vague memories of that summer, including a prolongued camping trip, but I was still pretty little so I don't remember much.
My parents took my brother to Europe when he was twelve or thirteen years old and they spent a few days in Boves. Then, when the whole family spent a month travelling in Europe in 2003, we all stayed with them again. At that time, there had been a few marital additions to the family and one baby. It was pretty much a given that I would have to stop in for a visit during my 2011 trip. Once we knew the dates, we arranged that Rachel and I would spend our first weekend in Italy at their place.
The Friday night/Saturday morning we arrived, we were given Elena and Sylvia's old room and around 0100 or 0130 we collapsed into bed. [PS - I do use a 24-hour clock. So do the Italians]. I set the alarm for 0900 because we were determined to start adjusting to the time change. We were pretty much dead to the world all night and dragging myself out of bed at 1000 was really, freaking hard. They had these amazing shutters on the windows that pretty much blacked out the whole room.
It was 0200 in the morning according to my body's clock and I felt like a zombie. I opened the bedroom door to be brutally assaulted by stabbing sunshine pouring in through the front windows. Blurry eyed, I looked down the hall in the direction of the kitchen [where I could hear the sounds of ... breakfast?] and saw a little body hurling itself towards me. The miniature person grabbed onto my knees saying, "Buongiorno! Ciao! Ciao!" [Boo-ohn-jee-ORno; Chee-OW - 'Good morning! Hi! Hi!']. "Mumble-mumble-mumble-ino!" [Not actually what was said, but rapidly spoken Italian sounds sort of like this, especially if you're half-asleep]. At that moment, Bruna stepped out of the kitchen and called the, what I could now tell was a, little boy back to the kitchen.
I got dressed and brushed my teeth and opened the bathroom door to see an adorable little girl with brown ringlets looking at me with confusion and apprehension. We just stood there and stared at each other for several seconds. Bruna once again came to my rescue, introducing me to Melissa, age 3 [Meh-LEE-sah, also known as MEHL-ee] and Enrico, age 5 [EH(n)-ree-coh; the 'n' is barely audible], Sylvia's daughter and Elena's son, respectively. Meli was a bit unsure, but Enrico had determined that we were to be best friends, right now, thank you very much.
Rachel made it out of bed shortly after me and we enjoyed a breakfast of yogurt, toast, and [amazing] coffee. Then, we walked into town to visit the market. It was exactly like a movie - adorable little town, narrow alleys, cobblestone streets, big open-air market, and loud Italians everywhere, waving their hands as they spoke. I loved it. We met Elena and her newly adopted daughter Punam, fifteen months old [Pooh-NAHM]. These kids were seriously unnaturally cute.
We marched through Boves' main piazza to one of the offices that the family runs. There, I saw Sylvia, and met her husband, Roberto. She told us we would be going sightseeing that afternoon and did we want to see a castell [she meant castle, but in Italian, you would pronounce the 't'] or go into a huge cave. We chose the cave. We picked up Sylvia's son, Lorenzo, age 8 [Loh-RREN-zoh], traded out Meli [who needed a nap] for Enrico, who didn't want to miss the fun, and headed for the hills. Literally.
The driving into the alps was a bit crazy. Italian 'secondary highways' are about the width of an alley you'd find behind your house and almost as bumpy. We twisted in and out, drove into valleys and up steep hills, and zipped through towns with roads so narrow that we could have reached out the window and touched the walls on either side.
The cave itselft was very cool. The beginning tunnel has been set up as an art exhibit [the only of its kind] and then you reach the main part and it's an enormous cavern with a waterfall pouring down in front of you. We got a guided tour up and down about a zillion stairs [literally thousands] with Sylvia translating the whole thing. It was pretty cold in the cave, so coming out was a relief. Then, the drive home. Rachel, prone to being carsick, sat in the front that time.
Another day I will talk about the pizza party we had afterwards. And about our trip into wine country - Barolo, to be exact. All you wine lovers will know how awesome that was.
By the way - I named this post what I did because those were our new, Italian-ized names; especially when pronounced by 3 and 5 year olds. Add lots of rolled 'r's on the RRRRRay-chelle. Perfecto!
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