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served a great meal consisting of steak
tartars, tonaletto, taglierini and Dolcetto
D'Alba; Fonduto con tartuffi (a cheese and egg
and sheep's milk mixture cooked for at least 12
hours and topped with finely grated truffles)
accompanied by a find old Barolo and finishing
off with pears in red wine and chives.
We spend the evening at the Truffle Fair for
which Alba is famous, where the air reeked from
the great mounds of grated truffles and Porcini
(fresh and dried ceps) for sale. A few
untiring stalwarts stayed on for a late
'opening' conference with eminent Italian
speakers and local dignitaries.
Most of the following day was taken up with a
long drive to Scheggino, bypassing Genoa and
heading down behind Portofino alongside the
terraces of olives and chestnut trees into
Tuscany. Southwards along the oleander lined
autoroute, passing the great chunks of marble
near Messa, we arrived for a midday break in
Pisa. Five inches of rain had fallen a few
days earlier and there was flooding everywhere
with many roads awash and with abandoned cars
standing up to their bonnets in water. The
drains had overflowed and the River Arno looked
dark and menacing. In contrast to the sodden
scene outside its walls, the Piazza de Miracoli
was bright and sunlit; the Duomo and the Torre
pendente, where Galileo tested his theories on
the laws of gravity, stood in singular
magnificence. The past grandeur of Pisa was
most evident in places like the historic Piazza
de Cavalieri, where the Knights of St. Stephen
had assembled in the first Crusade to fight the