Part one
My name is Maura and I live in
I have always been a foodie and a keen cook as are all my friends so after many months of passing on the delicious recipes and simple cooking tips taught to me by Yolande, my Italian neighbour, my friends finally convinced me that I should be sharing this with other fellow foodies and therefore I have set up a business offering cooking holidays and culinary tours to this wonderful part of Italy.
We finally arrived in Italy eight days into our trip after visiting the (deserted) Belgian seaside towns (admittedly they were cute despite being mostly closed for winter so we penciled in a return visit) and staying overnight with Ray’s brother in Germany for a much needed shower after Ray accidently dismantled the shower cubicle in the campervan just 10 minutes after leaving home. The trip so far had been fraught with minor accidents, morning visits to service stations to wash, parking in the most obscure and interesting places (hmmm – worthy of its own story) and lots of laughter. After being warned by a tram driver in Turnin to be careful of pickpockets and given our recent catalogue of mini disasters we decided it would be just our luck to lose the small amount of pocket money we had so we decided to get back in our van and venture further south ending up in a small town called Cuneo about a hundred kilometers south of Turin completely off the tourist track.
We stayed three wonderful days visiting markets, shopping, drinking and eating the amazing local cuisine (sometimes in quite dubious surroundings but that’s a story for another day) and only just managed to fit in a barely sufferable two days in Dijon & Beaune, traipsing from wine producer to wine producer finding that ‘prized’ white Burgundy for our friends to showcase at their next dinner party!
For us this trip was the beginning of our long love affair with Italy which is how we have come, many years later, to buy a house in Puglia, ‘the heel’ where the love affair with the Italian people continue. To be continued . . . .
Maura