Summary
Lazy morning followed by a great burger for lunch. Vercelli is a very pretty city with many beautiful old buildings with wrought iron balconies and towers, SO many towers. Adding to the charm was a walking/biking path around the old town. It’s lined with double and quadruple rows of giant chestnut and linden trees and planted with blooming columbines, roses, guara, hosta and more. We took a long walk then hung out on our balcony enjoying wine, nuts and olives. Dinner was a disappointment. Rookie mistake of ordering cod while forgetting that it is never fresh cod, always reconstituted salt cod.
Details
Well not much planned for today. Kind of a ‘shelter in place’ day, but without the active shooter, or whatever. One might ask what we’re doing in this town on this trip. Truth be told we’re here to avoid doing too many hours of driving in a single day and also not to move too often (like every day). As such we’re here, but this isn’t in the top or second (or maybe even third) tier of places to visit in Italy. If you like risotto, well this is from where the rice comes. But as for things to do, it’s limited and as such we don’t have a lot scheduled.
What we do does include making ourselves lots of coffee in our room, which is a treat. Not all of the places we’ve stayed have a coffee maker, or even an electric kettle. Here we have both. Since I am fine with coffee as my breakfast, and Karen that plus a protein bar from her purse, we’re good until lunch. Trip Advisor points us to a well reviewed place near our room. ChatGPT says they serve eggs for breakfast (think an omelette) so we’re excited. We go there for lunch, thinking we’ll also case the place out for breakfast tomorrow.
It is a cool place and we do have lunch there, but they certainly do not serve eggs for breakfast (what a thought!). Karen’s burger is awesome and my Pad Thai is delicious (along with a beer). It’s the ABI we’ve been looking for (Anything But Italian). After lunch we take another walk. We’d done maybe a third of the “all around the city green ring” so we head back to pick it up where we left off yesterday.
This new part of the ring is interesting. The center strip is wider, there are two rows of trees on each side rather than just one, and there are tons of flowers planted and blooming. There are restaurants which have set up additional seating areas on the walk itself. It’s quite nice. We continue our walk, commenting on the buildings around us (some old and pretty, some 1970’s ugly).
We come across a big grocery store, again a Carrefour (French) and go in to check it out. We buy food to have for breakfast in our room tomorrow (yogurt, egg frittata, and some sliced meat for protein). We do the store aisle by aisle. It’s interesting what they have and emphasize. We think about living here. We could but… we like it back home.
We continue our walk, accelerating our route back home to our fridge. After more afternoon chilling in the cool room we dress for dinner. We’re going to a place known for having very authentic local food. We don’t have a reservation but we’re getting there right when they open (8:00 pm!) so we think we’ll be ok. And we are.
The place looks like an old church with columns, vaulted arches and a high ceiling. If you were setting up a dining room at a nunnery, this might be the look. Tables for four, all in rows. High back wood chairs. There’s a door to the kitchen with a green light (normally off). When an order is ready for pickup a bell is rung and the green light comes on. After someone picks up the order they turn off the green light. It’s a hoot.
We don’t want to overdo it so we just get a half bottle of wine (nine euros). We do each get a starter and we each get a main course (two different kinds of fish). The wine is good. I like my ravioli starter. Karen’s first course is thinly sliced beef filet with a sauce made of lots of garlic and anchovies. It’s a bit strong. Sadly both our fishes were a bit hard to eat. My trout had lots of bones and salt. Karen’s cod, she didn’t realize, would be salt cod. Not our favorite. But the wine was good.
We have a lovely, cool walk home. It’s getting dark and we see the moon with two planets in a straight line. We see lots of locals out socializing, enjoying lots of sliced meats and foods we’ve been having all over this part of Italy. It’s a thing.
Photos
