Blog posts for 10/2010  

More rugby pictures

Another few pictures from the VII Torino Rugby-San Mauro match of the past weekend.

Keep your eyes on the ball

Like flying

We can't lose this match

I. Will. Not. Give. Up.

Grit

Intensity

Tags: pictures, rugby, Settimo Torinese, sport, sports portraits

My first Oval Ball Weekend: VII Rugby Torino vs San Mauro

The first time I watched a Six Nations match on tv was around 1982, and back then that rugby competition was still known as the Five Nations. The first time I watched an NFL match on TV was in the early 1980s, and the Oakland Raiders were playing with Jim Plunkett as quarterback. American football has been one of the enduring passion of my life, and rugby is a sport I appreciate a lot.

And up to the past weekend I had never seen a live rugby match or a live American football match, despite spending two years in the USA and five in England. Well, that's sorted now.

Thanks to the Blacks Rivoli (football) and to the VII Rugby Torino, I have been allowed to shoot two matches from the sidelines: Blacks Rivoli vs Lancieri Novara, a match valid for the Italian Under 21 American Football Championship on Saturday night; then, on Sunday afternoon, the VII Torino Rugby vs San Mauro, valid for the Seniores Championship.

Well, here are a few pictures taken Sunday. Thanks to Graziano Destro of VII Rugby Torino for providing me with sideline credentials. The team's name is a wordplay, since the Roman ordinal VII is read, in Italian, as "Settimo", which is also the name of the city where the team plays, Settimo Torinese.








Tags: pictures, rugby, Settimo Torinese, sport

Girl with flower, Singapore

Girl with flower, Orchard Road, Singapore

Tags: pictures, Singapore

Harvest time in Andezeno

This weekend, hills and valleys around Turin seem to be blossoming with food and wine: wherever you turn your head there's a food festival, a wine-tasting event, a polenta party, and we are not even in bagna cauda/chestnuts season! Having too many choices usually leads to not taking a decision: today the main options were a wine event in Andezeno, in the hills near Chieri, or a food festival in my own town, Settimo Torinese. The sky was gloomy and rain was expected, so we drove away from Settimo, hoping to find better weather. Near Chieri I took a wrong turn, or so I thought, until I found myself driving past the Balbiano Winery: it looks like a navigation error plus a driving error can balance each other out...

In this part of Piedmont, Freisa is the main wine. Dark, tannic and full-bodied, Freisa is something I have been missing during the past nine years abroad, since it is seldom found outside Italy (well, at least in the restaurants and spirits shops I used to patronize).



At the Balbiano winery, we explored a museum of country life, then a cellar with a selection of wines (a heaven of Freisa, Bonarda, Malvasia), then tasted grape juice must (one of the few non-alcoholic drinks you can have in a winery!). The lady behind the wine-tasting bar was explaining how a certain type of Freisa wine was aged, and that, together with the selection of wines, was beginning to make my mouth water, when a call arrived: for those who felt like exploring the vineyard, a shuttle bus was ready. That Freisa would have to wait a bit longer...



At the vineyard, near the town of Marentino, we were part of a group of twenty-ish visitors who were allowed to roam the vineyard with shears and baskets to harvest grapes.

Back at the cellar, the Freisa I previously had to miss was there, waiting for me (and for many other visitors). The Freisa di Chieri Riserva Barbarossa, that was that wine's name, turned out to be great. So great, in fact, that I bought a bottle of it, despite being a skinflin

Tags: foods and drinks, Italy, pictures

In Maglione, even road signs are artistic

A series of road signs in Maglione, a small hilltown in Piedmont, Italy. The rest of the town is quite artistic as well.

Tags: Italy, pictures