Back to Grenoble

Today we made the onerous four hour drive back to Grenoble. Just kidding! I know how lucky we are to be within a four hour drive of Lago Maggiore. We checked out, took the by now familiar ferry back to Stresa, loaded up the car and then went off in search of coffee. Mom wandered off to look at the stores, and we were soon laden with amaretti, wooden pinnochio dolls and a fancy cane for dad. I checked out some engravings of Isola Pescatore, but the prices were a little to high. At this point our plan had been to use the famous Osterie & Locande d'Italia: A Guide to Traditional Places to Eat and Stay in Italy to find a restaurant at which to have lunch, but I gently suggested that we skip it since we had already eaten countless megacalories. As soon as I mentioned it, mom looked visibly relieved and we agreed to stop somewhere with simpler fare. I tried to find something about street food, since I had heard mention of local specialities, but the only thing I could find in the area was something called "farinata". The best I could do was find a place on the outskirts of Torino with "Farinata" in the title, so we plugged it into the GPS and set out. Unfortunately, the GPS brought us to a narrow cobbled road

which required some very delicate maneuvering and a turnaround flanked by gaping pits.

After a while, we found a way out of Stresa without the GPS, and not on dirt roads or hiking paths. From there it was autoroute time again, until Torino. It was a bit of a maze in Torino, but we made it to the Farinata place without major hijinks. The neighborhood looked dodgy, so I left mom and Zoe in the car while I ran out to get a few portions of the much anticipated food. One problem was that I had no idea what farinata actually looked like, so I could not point to it, using the standard tourist pantomime (followed by 2 fingers held up to specify quantity). Instead, I just said "Farinata?" hopefully, and the server nodded and pointed to a few triangular grey pieces of food next to the pizza. I bought three and brought them back to the car in a pizza box. We broke it open as soon as I was back at the car, and I tasted a corner of one. Unfortunately, it tasted like deep fried cardboard, but without the delicious cardboard flavor. Worse still, the grease managed to adhere to your tongue, so I was tasting the greasiness for the next fifteen minutes. Also, it might have been a coincidence, but a few minutes after eating a chunk of farinata, I got a headache. My theory is that it was loaded with MSG. Anyway, Zoe was quickly relieved of her slice of the deep fried vileness, and we set out in search of better food.

We were hoping to stop at the Sacra de San Michele, since we had missed it on the way there, but by the time we arrived in San Ambrogio and managed to find a place to eat, we were all too tired to face the thirty minute drive up to the Sacra. Lunch was a few very basic sandwiches, and fresh squeezed orange juice, which Zoe got to watch the making of. From San Ambrogio, I was confronted with the usual dilemma of whether to trust the signs or the GPS, and choose poorly: the signs for Frejus take you on a half hour drive right next to the autoroute on small roads. Once on the autoroute, we went into the series of tunnels that eventually take you back into France, and along the autoroute that taunts you with signs for famous cols (Galibier, Croix de Fer, Glandon). After getting through grenoble traffic, we finally made it home.