Road Trip Torino: Day 5

Rain. It’s still raining. So, today we’re going to visit a market.

As we walk to school every day, we walk through an enormous market. There are several large buildings to house the indoor part of the market, and all around these is the outdoor part of the market. For the most part, the outdoor part sells housewares and fruits and vegetables. The indoor part sells meat and cheese and some bread.

So today we’re going to go inside one of the markets. I wish you could see the whole scene and hear the vendors talking to each other and to their customers. I wish you could smell the herbs in the outdoor market. We’ll save that for another day—today we’re going to go inside to get out of the rain.

The first thing you notice is that there’s meat everywhere. This is not a place for vegetarians. There are all sorts of animals: beef and pigs and lambs of course, and chickens. But there are also rabbits and pheasant and duck and quail and boar and even horse meat. They use every part of the animals as well. Here you can buy the muscle meat that we’re used to eating, and also the liver of course. You can also buy all the inner organs. I won’t go into any more detail, because this is a family blog, but suffice it to say that I even saw a couple of…ahem… organs that I’ve NEVER seen in a butcher shop (don't worry, I did't take photos of those…)

What’s not eaten fresh is preserved for the future.

There are also all sorts of cheeses. For dinner we bought a local cheese called Toma. We ate it with some bread and some sausage. It was lovely.

Our shopping done, we stopped by the bar for an espresso to fortify us before we once again braved the weather outside. It was a dreary day, but we had some lively lessons in the morning, and an art history class in the afternoon.

The weather prediction is for more rain tomorrow, but I really think it’s going to clear up. This is Italy, after all!

To be continued…