My Best Day (As of yet!)

Having already and conveniently been on a trip to Rome to see Ireland beat Italy in the Six Nations one of my friends Chiara invited myself and our English friend Daniella to come and visit her and her family at home in Trento, which of course we took her up on and I could not be more glad that we did. 

She lives in a little village called Cembre, which is literally in a gaping valley between multiple Alps. It is stunning and there are just vineyards everywhere. My attempts at photography were in vain because my photos just don't do the place justice or show how deep the valley goes. Myself and Daniella spent most of the journey home from the bus stop, trying to stop the drool from rolling down our faces from our wide open mouths, we’d never seen anything like it.

Chiara’s family were adorable and so welcoming. Her dad is able to speak German and her brother spoke a multitude of languages so we had no issue communicating with them but her mother only spoke Italian, so they had to translate for us, which was cool but I found it a shame that it was difficult to speak to her because I got the impression she had a lot more to say. Her Dad told us lots of travel stories and tales of younger working days, and about all the cool places he’s lived. He was really interested in history and told me that myself and him had a lot in common because we both come from a long line of Celts, which I thought was very funny but actually sounds rather accurate upon reflection.

Chiara took us out walking through all the vineyards and showed us how they harvest, they're currently cutting most of the new branches off the little trees, they only leave two on them so they can be stronger and keep the quality up. There literally was vines everywhere, not a square inch of ground in the entire village was wasted, it was remarkable. We also got to visit her dad's distillery, which was amazing. Their speciality is traditional north Italian Grappa, which is a spirit made by distilling the skins, pulp, seeds, and stems (the pomace) left over from winemaking after pressing the grapes. We got a full tour of the distillery, which is not normally open to the public and got to sample lots of different products and we were so impressed with the knowledge he was displaying, the passion was oozing out of him and it was so nice to see. The distillery was just outside their village and the cellar was buried into one of the surrounding mountains, they don't use artificial refrigeration, it's all nature Alpine temperatures used in the aging of their produce. He gave me some brandy that was aged in an old Scottish whiskey barrel and asked if I could taste the smokiness from the whiskey (being Irish), I said I could and I was lying.

We then went to see Chiara's brother and his team at Curling practice. Her brother and the three boys he happened to be training with completed for Italy in the 2018 Winter Olympics in Korea. Even though Daniella had never heard of any of them and didn’t know the slightest bit about curling, we were starstruck. They had a great time trying to explain the basic art of the sport in a mixture between German and English. Afterwards, we went home and made our own fresh pasta under Chiara's mother's supervision, which was so fun and so innkeeping with the Italian cultural experience. We ate our homemade fresh pasta with their homemade creamy mushroom sauce. Chiara’s mam had picked the mushrooms we were eating on her walk through a forest the day before. The food in Italy generally speaking had been phenomenal, but that meal just put the icing on the cake for us, it was second to none and the family just went all out being cute and hospitable for us.

All in all, it wasn’t the most outstanding or life altering day at all but the next day on my way home, on a seven-hour Flixbus I was writing a letter to my parents about what we had been doing in Trento and I just started crying – hysterically. I was just suddenly and completely overwhelmed with joy. I think I just realised all of a sudden how lucky I was and just saw the beauty in the ordinary things that Chiara had been showing us. It was horrendously embarrassing and I’m sure it will never happen again but in that moment, I was just so grateful, I could easily be the only Irish person that’s ever set foot in that little village and I’ll probably never see the place again. It’s a moment I’ll never forget and will think it’s a story that I’ll be telling for years to come.

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