Saturday, September 28, 2024

Berbenno di Valtellina, Italia

Happy birthday Mattia! 40! Congratulations, you are now officially an old man!

It is an easy relaxing day today. We are going to visit Pina for lunch. We went for a walk along the Sentiero di Valtellina. The Sentiero is a walking path the stretches from Bormio at the east end of the Valtellina to Lake Como on the west end.

The Sentiero Valtellina is a wonderful cycle-pedestrian path. It is mainly flat or slightly sloping. The path follows the flow of the Adda river, coming across historic villages, castles, churches and buildings. The entire Sentiero is 114 km long, we only choose a small portion from where the bridge over the Adda towards Colorina is, to a point about a mile west, where we turned around and walked back. We might have gone further but we only had so much time.

Afterwards we went to lunch at Pina’s. She made us polenta taragna. Polenta taragna is a robust polenta of corn flour and buckwheat, cheese and butter. One of my favorite dishes. It is traditionally served while it is hot and still semi-fluid and stringy. Usually accompanied by sausages or roasted pork ribs. This afternoon Pina served it with a veal stew. It was outstanding. Pina is a really good cook.

After lunch we walked through her garden. She had apple, pear, apricot, persimmon and cherry trees. She keeps her vegetable garden, rabbits and chickens. She does hire some help in pruning the trees, something Bruno used to do. 79 and still doing all of this. Only to be that young or have that much energy.

We drive back to Berbenno, took the usual pisolino. Got up and played cards in the breakfast room. Just after nine it was bedtime. A nice relaxing day, but I still didn’t have any trouble falling asleep.

Buonanotte e ciao, Enrico e Maria