La Mandria - Regional Park in Piedmont

North of Turin, near the hunting palace La Venaria Reale, there is a beautiful regional park called La Mandria certainly worth a visit, especially on a beautiful day. La Mandria was created in the 16th century as a hunting reserve for the Savoy family and also was used as a holiday retreat for the King and his Court. There are several buildings that can be visited, including Royal apartments.

We went just for a couple of hours after visiting La Venaria Reale and we did have a relaxing time indeed. Scattered around the grounds there are farms that have been transformed in restaurants, bars and other attractions. One has a bike-hire facilities so for only a few Euros we got a bike each and pedalled around the park. The children absolutely loved it!

We spent a few minutes at the stables where there were two little foals and a few ponies and horses. We fed them straw that was around the paddocks and loughed at the little ones still struggling to stand steadily on their legs!

We ended up having an aperitif at one of the bars, enjoying the sunshine of 6pm. The children asked for some crisps. Since they didn't have any, compliment of the owner, they served us a massive portion of roasted potatoes with rosemary: delicious!

If I'd known it before, I probably would have spent the day at La Mandria, visiting the various buildings throughout the day. It is a much more child friendly environment than La Venaria Reale as you can have a mixture of sight-seeing and free-running!

Venaria Reale - Turin

"Venaria Reale" is the hunting residence of the Savoy family between the 16th and 18th century. The palace is set in a magnificent park north-East of Turin, at the edge of hills stretching towards the Alps and covered in woodlands.

The palace was used as an army camp and left in disuse for centuries, but it was restored to its original splendour in the new millennium. The interiors of the palace are quite bare and there is no furniture. Instead, the rooms are hosting an exhibition of paintings and rugs mixed with film and photography art that recreates the court life.

We went with our children who found the palace a little bit boring though! The gardens instead have been also restored and it was lovely to stroll around them on a sunny day.

On a practical note, when you reach Venaria you need to follow the indication for the palace that take you to a side entrance. To your right there is a long road with trees either side if it and entering a gate that indicates "La Mandria" park. You need to park along this road. During the week it is free parking, while at weekend there is a fee to pay. You can then walk to the side entrance of the palace or enter from the gardens. Tickets for the gardens and the palace can be bought jointly or separately.

If you intend to have lunch there, it is better if you take your own lunch. We found the cafe in the gardens to have only a limited choice of sandwiches, especially for children. We also had a coffee and ice-cream in a kiosk by the roses archways.

Grapes Harvesting

I always thought that Grapes harvesting was something for September/mid October at the latest, but when we went to Villa Mimma during the end of October half term School Holidays we had a great surprise and managed to help a friend with one of his latest crops of organic grapes!!!

It was a beautiful day and we could see the Alps and in particular the pointy top of the Monviso mountain where the River Po starts and that you can admire from most of the Monferrato.

We started with a couple of hours harvesting. I remembered going to pick the grapes when i was little in my Grandfather's vineyards near Villa Mimma, but I was worried that my three boys (aged 9, 7 and 6) would have got bored. I was surprised to see how much effort they put into it and how much fun we had.

Leonardo and Isabella, our friends, really treated us to a lovely afternoon because after the hard work we went to the cellar and pressed some of the grapes that were picked a couple of days earlier - I learnt that one of the tips of organic wine making is to leave the grapes to die completely for a couple of days, hence we could not press the one we picked ourselves.

Anyway, we had great fun watching the cores being spat out by the machine and the kids thought they were drinking wine when they were given the juice off a massive "dustpan" type of thing :-)

As it wasn't enough yet, we went to see what was happening in the big "botti" and the kids climbed up the ladder to go and look inside to their delight.

Tired and hungry at 7pm we had a "merenda" of "salame", "focaccia" and the most delicious onion quiche that you could have ever tasted, all made by Isabella, accompanied by a couple of Lorenzo's delicious organic wines.

As soon as I have some photos reformatted, I'll post a few for everybody to envy! It was a lovely time and a grate memory for me.