Documentaries, Shopping and Rain, Chieri, Italy

Zagan the motorhome is huddled up against the cold and rain in a vast, empty car park in Chieri, Italy (N45.00419, E7.82796). It’s a month since we left home and time has flown by, who knows where we’ll be next month – we certainly don’t.

Jay eyeing up the water machine – free for still, 5c for 1.5l of fizzy – Zagan in his car park behind

After another great night’s sleep in the sosta in Turin, probably more due to tiredness from walking around the Egyptian museum as opposed to silence around us (which there wasn’t), it was time to leave this morning. We’d seen the sights that had taken our interest and the weather had turned. As one of the group of dog walkers, who meet to chat and let their pooches play on the sosta twice a day, said last night when Charlie went to meet them all, ‘tomorrow it will rain cats and dogs’. It’s not quite that bad, but steady enough to make you want to stay in your van with the heating on.

I went to pay at the office as we left, and for some reason we got a €3 discount, so our two nights were €33. The lady behind the counter tried to explain, and I think it might have been because I’d tried to get a shower not realising you had to pay for them, so ended up with a card you put money onto to pay for the services. We didn’t end up using the card, but somehow it might have got us a discount – things in Italy always seem to be complex for no reason.

Charges for extras at sosta – you need to get a card from the office to pay for them

We psyched ourselves up for the Turin traffic only to find that as we were now south of the centre heading further south, and it was Saturday we only had low level chaos to content with. We’d picked the sosta at Chieri as it was close by and we still haven’t decided where to go yet. This afternoon Jay proposed getting a ferry over to Croatia, ‘sounds good – do any run where we could camp on board this time of year?’ He’s gone quiet, so I suspect Plan G is now in development.

We saw a lot of Italy on our previous trip. We love the country, its people, the food etc and criss-crossed to get in most of the high-lights. So now I am wary of going back to places we’ve been to in case it spoils the rose-tinted magic memories.

Reaching Chieri we turned right off the main road only to find a 2.8m high bridge right in front of us, ‘SATNAV!!!!’ (to be fair she has no clue how big we are). At just shy of 3m there was no way we’d get under, so I leapt out to act as both reversing camera and warning triangle while Jay manoeuvred Zagan back onto the main road. Now I know we’ve complained about Italian drivers, but the one thing that is fantastic about them is how they just accept other people’s bad driving. We’re now the ones causing chaos, but they fluidly move around us as if we weren’t there – no horns, no anger, just business as usual – phew!

Finding our parking spot for the night I used satnav to see how far we were from the town centre. With no tourist office or tourist attraction found I asked where the nearest shops were, would you believe it, we’re 300m from a Lidl. So our big sightseeing for today was a walk over to Lidl. We left with a host of Italian lovelies – pocket coffee (think chocolate liqueur but with a shot of espresso instead), actual chocolate liqueurs, lime and chilli crisps, truffle gnocchi, tomato sauces, dried porcini mushrooms and much more – we only went in for a nose and some bread!

A small sample of our shop – yum!

As we dried off from our walk I knocked up one of our favourite van recipes – easy pizza (well we are in Italy and don’t have an oven to cook the actual thing):

1. Take a tortilla wrap and spread tomato purée on one side of it.
2. Add a sprinkling of basil (dried or fresh) and oregano (optional).
3. Cover half of the tomato purée with grated mozzarella cheese and fold the tortilla over it.
4. Heat both sides of the wrap in a dry pan for a couple of mins until they go brown.

As the rain continued to fall we decided to while away the afternoon watching a couple of movies and eating some of our recently purchased chocolates. The movies turned out to be documentaries, both totally different but equally fascinating. If you are after something to watch on a rainy afternoon try Tim’s Vermeer or Searching for Sugar Man and let us know what you think.

So the maps and guide books are out again and tea looks set to be an extravaganza as Jay is in charge and has been reading the cook books.

Ju x

PS – It’s one month and two days since my head was shaved for charity and it’s looking like this. Magically the top sticks straight up while the sides lie flat, so it is in sort of a style of its own. I didn’t mind so much in France as it seems anything goes with regards to appearance for ladies, however here in Italy everyone has coiffured locks and I’m feeling a bit of a weirdo!