Tirano - La Citta Delle Montagne

Tirano

...is a less pretty Italian Banff. The town is a little larger than Banff and the river that bisects it not quite as mighty as the Bow, but it has the same sort of small alpine feel, and  a river running through it. In fact, when I stood on one of the bridges that arched over the river it was almost as if I was looking at _____ Mountain. I think the main difference is that Banff has an incredibly young feel to it and is decidedly a ski town - lots of ski/snowboard shops, cheap eats, bars and 20-something's running around.

We grabbed a quick lunch at the hotel restaurant and crushed a bottle of wine, that is ended up drinking most of, and set out exploring the town. There are many retail stores along the Main Street running through the downtown, including 3 or 4 shops proclaiming to sell authentic Valtilinese products. Naturally I had to check them all out. Nothing incredible to report back, although there was a lot of a long noodle pasta that was flavoured with blueberry stocked on all the stores' shelves.

After a bit of a caffeine boost we sniffed out the older part of the city; I have learned that this is usually the most interesting part of the city and tends to yield restaurants that cook food typical of that particular region.

The food in Tirano is significantly better than that in Banff. For dinner we had an assortment of cheeses and cured meats from the region. A couple of e meats had a sort of "fridgy" taste to them, but aside from that everything was excellent - I had a grilled sausage and veg and Lynn, cotoletta with veg. The sausage was packed with flavour and ha ska nice tang to it which was pleasantly foiled by the copious amount of butter used to sautéed what I was hoping would be a healthy side. To say Lynn's cotoletta (Italian schnitzel) was big would be an understatement, as it took up her whole plate. It was scrumptiously crispy despite slightly burnt bottom, and was incredibly moist on the inside. Though I mused about dessert, it was probably for the best that we forwent it.

Yesterday we pretty much just puttered around town and pick up some stuff for lunch on the train as we were anticipating prohibitively expensive prices. We also stopped in to a little Osteria to check out the menu, at which point there as no one there(not a good sign),  ran a few more errands and returned only to find the place packed to the gills, all speaking Italian (the best sign). We had grilled porchetta, which is pork belly, or bacon for those of you who are a tad squeamish, that is rolled with herbs, tied and roasted til the skin is crackly-crisp. It was magnificent, with a stupendous side of roasted potatoes. We also had spatzli, which seemed to be more common the further north we traveled and understandably so, as the area we were staying in borders Switzerland. the spatzli was served with a bacon and cream sauce and was also delicious.