More about Our First Day in Piemonte (Monday)

So we now have been here two nights and seem to have really settled in.  On Monday afternoon we spent a really lovely couple of hours with the mother of our host.  They all live here in this big home, but Teresa- the mother lives in an attached home by herself.  She is originally from France but has lived here since marrying her husband in the 50’s.  Speaks English fairly well.  David and she took out the family trees and found how they are related.  So her daughter Valentina who owns the B&B and David are 8th cousins.  After chatting she wanted us to come see her home.  Her home is amazing, lovely big and almost like a museum.  Her husband was an art collector so there are rooms and rooms of paintings, sculptures, etc.  There are also 4 frescos on the walls that her husband discovered many years ago and removed the outer paint and restored them- hence the feeling that it is a museum. 

Coming to Europe always  reminds me how very young the US is and that most things we will see here are older than our country.  The frescoes were probably painted about 1600 or so.  She also had letters from about 1200 that were there and a Bible in Latin also quite ancient.  

Later that evening we were taken out for dinner to Biella by one of David’s photography FB friends, Angela and her husband Max.  First they brought us to where they live- they live in a renovated castle in Valdengo.  It is a large castle that has been bought and made into apartments.  Not all filled- they told us there were some for rent if we were interested.  Dinner at a restaurant in Biella- antipasto and risotto with of course plenty of wine.  Later we went to see the town of Candelo- where there is a section that is walled in- but it is a place where the village would stock food in the walled warehouse in case of attack.  

—Ellen