ABS prefers to ignore this story and, instead, think about happier days in Turino
TURINO
The bus dropped us off at our hotel and ABS and The Bride had some free time to walk around the city and to locate a store that sold Prosecco and Wine and we were back in our room and ready for our tour which was hosted by this delightfully demented and charming pepper pot of a local lady whose voice and demeanor are forever memorable.
On one part of the tour, she had our group pause just as we entered this medium sized entrance hallway leading into a shopping area and as she was pointing out the alcoves above where once women engaged in fine needlepoint an obviously exasperated businessman gestured dramatically as he berated her for stopping the tour in what he considered his right of way to exit the hallway.
That tiny little woman had an emotional fuse shorter that she was and, immediately, she rhetorically began to launch several serious salvoes of insults back at him and as she was doing this she paused momentarily to say to us: “He trashed my feet.”
Hysterical.
All of the tour guides in Italy are smashing in many different ways, not the least of which is that each of them, in different cities, were so obviously in love with both their city and Italy as a country but this guide in Turino was something special and she – much like Gracie Allen – had an innocence of expression that often bore both very sweet or very funny results.
When she was leading us around Turino, it became clear she was not too keen on the enemies of Turino, French and German, for she called them “Donkey People” and, minutes later, describing the political machinations involved among the men and women of the Savoia Royalty, she spoke about one woman who became a “Daughter in Law” and then she thoughfully paused and said, “No, that's not right, she was a "Daughter in love.”
Felix Culpa (Happy fault).
When she led the group into the former Royal Palace of the Savoia Monarchy, she described their classic Royal Blue and Ivory colors as “Whisper and powder blue” and, immediately, this American nitwit woman on our tour said, “Don't you mean, subtle?”
I wanted to pick up a vase and brain her with it for one can no more improve upon the guide's description of the royal colors than one could improve upon the words of Giorgio, our Uber Tour Guide, who described his Grandfather's practice of introducing him to wine when he was a young boy; He used to pour a few drops of red wine into my water; he called it a shadow.
Go ahead, Americans, improve upon that romantic and poetical description.
It was fascinating to stand in that Palace and look in the direction our guide pointed (a road leading towards the Alps) Start walking down that road, and sixty kilometers along, you will be in France.
The city of Turino has great architecture but ABS was waiting to go inside the Chapel of San Giovanni Battista, Saint John the Baptist; sadly, the Shroud of Turin was elsewhere as the Chapel was still under repair following a fire that Masons had set with the intent to destroy the Shroud, the burial cloth of our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ.
Of course, our Guide did not tell our Tour that but ABS did in the form of a question put to her before the group; so what if she didn't respond, the truth was expounded publicly and that was satisfying to ABS , if nobody else.
We did go inside and see the life-sized (actually death-sized) photographs of the Shroud and some female functionary performed a very mundane explanation of The Shorud that was actualised in such a passive voice that it was clear she was not buying any of the truth that the Shroud is undeniably the burial shroud of Our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ; Lord have mercy on the doubters and deniers in Turino.
After exiting the Chapel, ABS caught-up with our Guide and asked her what she thought of the Shroud and she was quick to confess that she is not even a Christian, say nothing of being a Christian Catholic, and she said that none of those things were of any importance to her.
On the other hand, she did tell our group, proudly, about how the Mayor of Turino, Stole only what he needed when Turino hosted the Winter Olympics in 2006.
So there's that...
She was also very persuasive about the many positive aspects of the Italian Health Care System (It should have been our model); she was very proud of it, rightly so, and while she noted that it is almost a national duty to try and evade the taxes necessary to fund it, she did say that treatment literally is based on a case by case , need of care basis, and the rich do not crowd out the poor when it comes to health care.
She was refreshingly honest in speaking so frankly about her fellow Italians, she noted they have an odd love-hate relationship with their politicians (esp. vis a vis taxes and avoiding them) but she also noted the heart-warming practices of the government, such as their practice of giving free tickets to the poor so they can enter and eat at such elegant places as the Savoia hunting lodge, “Veneria Reale Tour” (RIP OFF).
ABS love the Italians!!
That lodge, was obviously a place for very wealthy madmen, lunatics, and toss pots, and it still had scores of skulls from the enormous elk they killed on hunting forays up into the Alps.
What the hell did the women do while the men were on their horses hunting the foothills of the Alps? Whatever the hell they were doing, they weren't raising the children and cooking for the Savoia Royalty has servants to do everything – but hunt and drink.
Still the gardens outside looked pleasant enough spread out as they were so close to the Alps.
Back in our hotel that night, ABS and the Bride drank their Processco and Barolo wine purchased from a store close to the hotel. When they walked into it, they noticed there was no cold Prosecco (OK maybe the Italians are not that great) and so ABS grabbed a bottle and stuck it inside a freezer beneath a dozen of so bags of frozen peas and they walked the aisles for 20 minutes or so until it was sufficiently chilled and ABS grabbed a very inexpensive Barolo – Ten Euros – and returned to our room to talk about the day.
One of the things we talks about was the charming story of how Bread Sticks came into being. It seems that one of the Savoia Kings and Queens had a lil' Prince who was born with an abnormally small throat and he was unable to swallow the normal-sized bread the Royal Bakers made and so one clever Baker conceived the idea of making a loaf of bread shaped like what the King and Queen ate but in a much smaller size; voila, bread sticks were created and so the Royal Queen Mothered her Lil' Price by taking advantage of the Bread Stick that was created owing to the needs of the Prince being the mother of the bread stick invention.
O, and the subjects began to eat the bread sticks out of a sense of solidarity with the lil' Prince and, the rest is history...
The Barolo was stunningly good; earthy and rich with cherry and blackberry flavors bearing with it tannins of consequence with a very long finish with a smell that, unknowingly to ABS, would later remind him of a place he had yet to visit, the Piemonte (NOT PIEDMONT) Region of Italy; the beautiful Italian version of Napa Valley.
