We woke up on Saturday to rain here in Chamonix, so we decided to drive to Italy for the day. We would find a place to have lunch, then if we felt good we would drive into the Aosta Valley to tour a castle, and then we would go grocery shopping at the big store in Aosta, buying food for the next two dinners.
Unfortunately, our big hike from the previous day—and my decision to hike hard and fast with the 3yo on my back—had left me with major blisters. Mark dressed my wounds and then I tried to get my feet into some decent walking shoes. But the only shoes that didn’t hurt my heels too badly to walk were my high-heeled ankle boots. (Not really surprising as gravity drives your foot forward.)
Oh well, I was going to Italy after all. Might as well look stylish.
We headed out in the rain toward the Mont Blanc tunnel. (The golden-colored flame sculpture is part of a memorial to the people who died in a fire in the tunnel in 1999.)
This is a pretty long tunnel. We bought a ten-trip pass, since we will go back and forth quite a bit, and there’s a discount.
They have blue lights every so often on the tunnel wall. The space between the blue lights is the minimum following distance. Pretty easy; you just have to keep two blue lights between yourself and the car in front.
Sometimes the weather is completely different on the other side of the mountain, but today it wasn’t. Still: Italia!
We passed the big lift that goes up just outside the tunnel (Skyway Monte Bianco)…
…and many houses with slate roofs. Sorry they are so blurry.
Our goal was lunch. I found a list of restaurants that were certified to carry specialties local to the Val d’Aosta, which is an A.O.C., and we found a town that had several. We didn’t have to go to one of the certified restaurants, but we figured we’d find something there. The town we chose was Pré-Saint-Didier. We switchbacked down the mountain a bit, my oldest navigating for restaurants on his phone, and when we passed a pleasant-looking one Mark made up his mind; he went past the end of the switchback, turned around, and we headed back up to Ristorante Emma.
There seemed to be an odd parking spot by the kitchen door (there was a man in a chef’s toque smoking a cigarette outside it); we parked and Mark made me ask about it.
“Buon giorno,” I said, then, blanking out, I pointed at the car: “È okay?”
“Si, si.”
“Where do we go?” asked Mark, and this time I remembered, sort of: “Dov’è il entrata?” I swallowed the “il” a bit just in case I should have been saying “la.”
He pointed, and I went around the corner and found the lovely little entrance. Perfetto.
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Inside I remembered how to say there were seven of us, a family with five children, and we got a lovely big table by the window. The 3yo cried for a high chair. My mind blanked on the word “chair” and then I forgot how to say anything else, so we sort of gestured blindly until they brought us one.
In Italy last time people of all types and ages absolutely fawned over my bambino (che bella testa!) and I can report, sadly, that he seems to have grown out of it. But the waiters were still very quick to bring a basket of bread and crackers for the table.
We got English menus, and quickly decided to revert to our pattern of ordering six things and sharing them. Seven, now, since there were hungrier, bigger children.
Due antipasti (beef carpaccio and a plate of cured meats) to start, and then, with the help of a French-conversant waiter
, we asked for four different primi piatti (pastas) and a secundi piatti (roasted pork belly) to come all together for sharing.
, we asked for four different primi piatti (pastas) and a secundi piatti (roasted pork belly) to come all together for sharing.
As for the wine, Mark pulled out his well-used phrase, “Che cosa mi consiglia?”
And we waited a bit.
And red wine appeared. And it was very good. We had a lovely view out the window, which I photographed
… but sorry, I didn’t get the food. I hope you understand. It was gone too quickly.
The carpaccio was different from any I had had before; it was not sliced super thin, but it had been pounded super thin. It had little dollops of a creamy pungent sauce, almost like a horseradish, and also of a gel-like fruit sauce, and big fat caper berries. I loved it, and so did our oldest. The kids devoured the charcuterie plate, which came with little pillows of fried dough that the former bambino gobbled up.
For pastas, there were different raviolis, which were good, and a penne with lamb ragù especially requested by the 7yo, which I thought was the best of all the pastas. But the real star of the show was the pork belly. It didn’t look like much, but it was melt-in-your-mouth tender with a chewy, caramelized crust. Mark and I stared at each other and grinned over it.
With a little help from Google Translate, I practiced the sentence: “Generally, we share several dishes.” Condividiamo diversi piatti. And then we got ready to order dessert. Three desserts: strawberry sorbeto with something something cocoa, a peach tart with amaretto gelato, and cannoli.
“Metta i cannoli qui,” I added, pointing to a spot directly in front of my plate.
And indeed, that is where the cannoli ended up, much to my pleasure, although Mark preferred the peach tart.
My oldest, however, was with me on Team Cannoli.
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After that great success we were off to Castle Fènis. Into the rain again.
Not a very far drive past Aosta, Fènis came into view. This excited the 7yo very much.
We bought tickets for a 4 p.m. entry, and had to wait a bit. We walked around the castle grounds, on a path between two fields. Old-fashioned irrigation canals ran swiftly alongside the fence; I pointed out to the 7yo where the sluice was gated with a wooden board set in a slot, and asked why he thought it was there.
“To make the water all go that way,” he said, “but it’s leaking!”
Back in the castle courtyard the kids jostled for control of the cameras, and we realized too late that we should have brought a dummy camera for the 3yo.
Fortunately, I had a lollipop in my pocket, which we used to bribe the 3yo away from the camera and into the cloth carrier.
The castle tour was pretty cool, except that the children had hoped to be able to roam freely around, and this was definitely not allowed. Only following the guided tour was possible. There was an Italian-speaking docent, who tossed a little English our way, but far too many people for her to give us the whole spiel in English. And my receptive Italian is enough to catch words I am already expecting (“castello”), but not new ones.
So it was a long slow hour for the younger children, with a few treats along the way, like being invited to crowd into the big kitchen fireplace—the size of a freight elevator—and look up at the chimney far above.
There were some lovely frescoes, and a collection of wooden chests for brides’ trousseaus, and a very cool courtyard with gutters overhanging cistern-drains that went into a central water collection system.
But the kids were glad to be done with the castle, only because the tour was slow; we could have seen it all ourselves in ten minutes. If the tour had been in English I think they would have liked it better.
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On to the Gros Cidac grocery store in Aosta.
We chose cured meats, fresh pastas, cookies, yogurt. This weird tube of paste called “flavor tuna and ketchup,” which I had irrationally fallen in love with last time. Square bread and slices of orange cheese, which it is abundantly clear we had better not run out of. We let the kids buy a bunch of candy because they wanted to go pick something out themselves.
Somewhere in the cheese department my head began to spin.
Also the 3yo was melting down. So we got the heck out of there and drove back to France. My body said to me: “You want to lie down and not get up again for a while.”
So I did.
And while I lay there going “uuuuuuggggh,” Mark set up the dinner, mostly things we had bought at the Gros Cidac, and opened a bottle of bubbly wine, and miraculously when it was all on the table I felt well enough to get up and sit there and demolish a plate full of it.
Including half a tube of tuna-and-ketchup-flavored-paste, squirted onto boiled potatoes.
Italy food is definitely best.
I slept very, very well that night.
k,k
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