Always there is a nice church ....
View from my room in a very nice hotel ....
........ and a view at the garden from my other window......
Now down out of the mountains and heading due east, I crossed some flat land with a nice mix of agricultural, rows and rows of peach trees filled with ripe fruit that i could smell and light industrial.
I even recognized some of the same companies I work with in the US like Alstom above and Saint Gobain ........
......... my twin with the same hair and beard. And he spoke no Italian, only English. We struck up an instant friendship. It turns out he was from South Africa, a real character and had been living in this part of Italy for about 10 years. He was a very successful architect who had worked all over Europe.
I passed through some nice towns .... Alba and Bra down on the river before I started up into some nice rolling hills and into some vineyards.
I was surprised how high I had to climb, but it was worth it for the views, the small very lightly travelled roads and the much cooler air with a nice breeze. In the valley it was remarkably hotter as I was reminded when I made the descent into Canelli a decent sized town around 6:00 to look for a room.
Now what happened next reinforces my Buddhist belief In having good karma. In another blog I will talk about how I have gone about collecting good karma but tonight I certainly had some come back....... You see for about the past week I had stopped visiting the Information offices and getting a room reserved in parts of France where things had been booked up. Since Grenoble, the Alps and now Italy there always seemed to be reasonable places to stay.
So I went back to the relaxed style I had in Spain where I would just ride into town and ask around and see what showed up each night. Tonight I rode into Canelli and did my usual cruse about town to check it out. Usually I look for the center of town with a plaza or square with a fountain and look for where people were out and about. I have gotten pretty good at this, having scoped out many towns looking for a room, lunch, afternoon coffee, something sweet or a gelato. ........ but Canelli was different ........ there was no action anywhere ..... nothing, zilch, nada. It felt like Pittsfield 10 years ago when GE first left. Some old people and a few derelicts but no one young or no lively bar with tourists.
Finally after a few circles through town I went to an ATM because I was low on cash with the thought in desperation to head out to a bigger town down the river forced in a direction I really didn't want to go. While at the ATM a young guy on a bicycle pulled up to also get some cash. It turns out he lived outside of town, spoke excellent English, was an avid cyclist and knew a great place for a room and dinner a little down the road. Not only that but he was out for a ride and would show me where it was.
He then took me on a round about ride on some beautiful small roads I never would have found to a driveway that lead up to a chalet and wine producer....... very fancy.
Federico my savior for today ..... in typical Italian style he had gotten the phone number, called the Chalet and made a reservation for me all on his cell phone while riding at top speed.
A very handsome single guy who I gave Hannah's blog and email.
.
Then as if this wasn't enough good karma for the afternoon ...... needing every gear I had to climb the very steep driveway about 1 KM up to the Chalet I never would have found ....... this is who I met as I rode in ......
He had tried but failed to learn Italian and survived with a close circle of English speakers and I was invited to join them for dinner.
It was a lively and well healed group of locals and we had a lot of fun. They decided to celebrate the 4th of July one month late in my honor. They also told the entire staff, who they all knew very well that I was the son he never knew he had, who just showed up from America.
These are a few pictures of the place ......... pretty nice ....... it reminded me of places i stayed in on the Back Roads trip I took to Sonoma, CA.
I went to bed without posting a blog because the Internet went down.
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