Stuffed pigs

The whole purpose of this trip was to see my aunt and uncle. We drove over to the house at 10.00 and got no response. I also tried ringing and got no response. I was starting to get worried. We're sitting outside the house at 12.15 thinking that a surprise visit may not have been such a good idea after all. What if they are away? What if, what if, occupied our thoughts and conversation. I was pretty sure that if they were around they would return around lunch time so decided to sit it out. Sure enough, and much to our relief I saw my aunt walking towards the house at 12.30

Anyway, we hadn’t wasted all our time waiting for Pia. Guessing that she might be out and about, we headed over to the nearby outdoor food market for a look see. This daily market takes up about 400 metres of a narrow street and is packed with people, and packed with stall holders shouting about their produce in their incomprehensible local dialect. We loved it. It’s so colourful and unlike anything we normally find in France. You can pretty much buy all your shopping here but most stalls sell fruit and veg. Judging from the look of it, it is mostly home produced and very cheap. Now I’m no home economist but 15 artichokes for 3 euros, 3 cauliflowers for 1 euro and a kilo of oranges for 1.5 euros seemed pretty good to me. We found the same excellent prices at the local Ipercoop later in the afternoon and at a rough guess I’d say that prices were well below those in France, up to half.

On the way back we popped into a small café. I’d forgotten how busy they can be. In the fifteen minutes we were there about 25 people, mostly men, dashed in, ordered their shot of coffee, passed the time of day and then made way for the next wave. The banter was fabulous as was Jan’s hot chocolate which mostly comprised pure melted chocolate.

Back to Pia and Dino. We now had to ‘suffer’ our first dose of Italian hospitality. Despite what you may think, (or see – Ed), Jan and I don’t really eat much (in medical parlance it's known as short term memory loss - Ed). Finishing lunch became quite a challenge. A huge bowl of pasta would normally be far more than we would eat but in this case it was followed by parmigian di melanzane, stuffed meat and potatoes, pizza patata, sausages, several cheeses, speciality cakes, wine and liqueurs. If you say no, you offend, so you just have to go for it, whilst recognising that you have to eat all over again in a few hours time.

Given that we were only going to be there for two days, Dino nips out in the afternoon to shop for some of our favourite things. The freshest ewe's milk ricotta, burrata - a tiny sack of the freshest cow’s milk mozzarella filled with cream, scamorza - mozzarella smoked over pecan shells, provolone, pepato – a deep fried pizza dough, Parma ham. The list goes on, and on and on. If only I wasn’t such a greedy sod!

As we waddled back to the hotel a young, drunk, male weaved his way up the street towards us. As he approached Jan he stopped, looked at her and slurred, "Che bella." Not the best chat up line ever but welcome nevertheless. Welcome to Italy.