Ciao Roma!: Venaria Reale and Alba

I had a fantastic weekend. On Saturday, we had a class trip to Venaria Reale. Venaria was the hunting lodge of the Savoy family, the ruling family of Italy. After the Savoy’s were exiled, the palace was repossessed by the state and turned into a museum. They had a very interesting exhibit in honor of the 150^th anniversary of Italy’s unification, called La Bella Italia. Italy’s best art historian curated it, and he gathered famous works from around the time of the unification, and grouped them accordin to city. It was very interesting to see how the art work differed from region to region. Unfortunately, photography was prohibited for most of the exhibits, but here are a few photos:

On Sunday, I finally got to go for a wine tasting. My Italian studio partner lives in Alba. In the afternoon, his girlfriend, Denise, picked up a few friends and I to go and meet him at the Ceretto Winery. It was one of the coolest experiences of my life. Firstly, Alba is absolutely beautiful.

And the view from inside the cantina was incredible.

We tried 3 wines: Blange, Barolo, and Moscato. They were all so good!

I am so grateful for Denise and Max bringing us there.

max, me, aviel, rebecca

aviel even got to go for a ride on the ducati

After the wine tasting we went to the historic center of Alba.

denise, rebecca, and I

It is a very small medieval town, which is home to wine, truffles, Ferrero Rocher, and of course, Nutella.

vendor selling truffle oil and jarred truffles in the street... too bad truffle season starts in 2 months

After visiting the center, we stoped by Max’s house before heading to one of the hills overlooking the valley, where his mom gave us each 5 jars of nutella.