The little stone house in the Italian alps

Stories and pictures about our uniquely renovated Airbnb house, a visiting dog, multilingualism and some stunning alpine scenery

This newsletter continues accounts from my recent travels to Piedmont, Italy. Thank you to my newest subscribers: mattsnyder1970, tmeiers, spunkythewondersquid, J-mo (hi Justine!) and Vanda. Welcome to all of my readers, it’s a pleasure to be able to write for you. An especially warm welcome to those of you have taken the time to acknowledge my last couple of newsletters - Frowned Upon in Milan (about coffee in Milano Centrale train station) and Kidnapped and locked in a shed (about my childhood home in Uster, Switzerland as seen through current and past events). I appreciate your likes and comments, thank you!

Both articles mentioned are about my European trip - if you have not had a chance to read them, I invite you to click the links above.

This newsletter is about the rented Airbnb stone house in Piedmont and some commentary about the stunning region that is the Italian Alps (with pictures).

What is Airbnb

Airbnb, Inc. is an American company operating an online marketplace for short- and long-term rentals. The name is shortened from AirBedandBreakfast.com, but nobody calls it that. Today, Airbnb is the most well-known company for short term housing and vacation rentals, and I had my first experience with it in the Italian alps in April 2024.

The little stone house in Saint Denis

I had nothing to do with selecting or sourcing the lodging for our vacation; my sister discovered this place and organized the entire event.

The house she found was located in a small village called Saint Denis in the Italian alps about 800 meters above sea level, overlooking the beautiful Aosta Valley of Italy’s Piedmont region.

The house was situated in a neighbourhood above the actual town of Saint Denis; there were only a handful of other homes in our immediate vicinity, all featuring smoking chimneys, slate-shingled roofs and cars parked in small spaces around the private properties. This indicated the neighbouring homes were inhabited although I rarely saw anyone. The most interesting part however was the satellite dishes and other high-tech evidence adorned to the roofs of the homes, contrasting the town’s medieval theme.

Clearly, people did not mind living in remote alpine villages as long as they had access to the internet.

I didn’t know what to expect when we arrived in Saint Denis. The weather was cool and rainy and the foggy clouds obscured some of the snow-capped alps in the background. But that didn't detract from the immediate visuals…

As we pulled up to the house I marveled at the stunning beauty that is the alps in general despite the periodic fog and cloud coverage. The little houses, the tidy gardens, the flowering herbs on the hillside meadows, the many small and not-so-small vineyards… it’s a sight to behold. I’m glad I took as many pictures as I did, some of which I will share with you here.

Please note your email might truncate this newsletter claiming its size is too large due to the images I included. If this happens, you can read this newsletter in the app by clicking here: writerofwordsetc.substack.com

Creative renovations

The house we inhabited for seven days is publicly listed on Airbnb. The pictures in this newsletter are mine.

Living in an old stone house may seem counter-intuitive when on vacation, but let me assure you the owner did a phenomenal job renovating this vacation property with all the benefits of contemporary living. The house sleeps 10 and has multiple bathrooms, a modern kitchen, a wood-burning fireplace, balconies, and probably the most comfortable mattresses I’ve slept on in a long time. He did not spare any expense in making this gorgeous house as comfortable as possible.

My aunts and I shared sleeping quarters in the basement. There were two single beds at the bottom of the stairs, which flanked a separate bedroom with a queen size bed and en-suite three-piece bathroom. One aunt occupied the single bed opposite mine, and the other aunt chose the bedroom.

My mom occupied one of two master bedrooms with en-suite bathroom on the entry-level floor, and my sister and her various family members took over the other side of the house and the upstairs, which also contained the main living area with fireplace, kitchen and dining space.

We were comfortable in the spacious house even as more family trickled in throughout our stay. We simply played a little bedroom roulette.

The town of Saint Denis

The Airbnb house was nestled into a side of a hill and belonged to the town of Saint Denis. The total area of Saint Denis is a mere 11 km² (4 miles²).

Saint Denis is located an hour’s drive from some spectacular views of Switzerland's Matterhorn just to the north, easily accessible by car. This iconic Swiss mountain, its shape mimicked in the infamous triangular chocolate Toblerone, is about an hour’s drive from Saint Denis, which some of our group attempted to visit one day. I was not part of that excursion because that day I opted to visit Fort Bart and its medieval village instead. (Stay tuned for a separate newsletter on that adventure.)

Turns out the Matterhorn was partially obscured that day by dense fog and cloud, as some of the family mentioned upon return.

Public transportation

The villages nestled into the mountain sides above Aosta Valley are relatively remote. Well-paved and cared-for roads lead to every commune, no matter how small. I marveled how few potholes or cracks in the roads were present on the narrow switchback highways.

Delivery trucks moved up and down the switchbacks regularly. Some of the vans were nameless, but others were clearly delivering food. It is quite possible, no matter the elements, to remain in your little hamlet stone house and have food sent by car as long as you know how to use the internet.

I will talk more about the internet connectivity another time, but just to give you an idea, I was hiking alone one day toward the Castello di Cly along roads and trails and at no time did I ever lose access to internet data.

I used an eSim card by Airalo which I highly recommend for European travel - stay tuned for more about this topic.

To vacation in Aosta Valley (or in Piedmont in general) means you definitely need a car to get around. A lady who came by the house mentioned there had been, at one time, more public transportation available for tourists and locals, but they discontinued the old train system to upgrade it into an electric (cleaner energy) one. I saw one notice which announced railway electrification work from January 2024 to December 2026 was in place, and that for parts of that route, buses would transport passengers to their destination. But to get to a bus stop, one had to get down to the valley, and for that, a car is now required.

Note: my sister and her partner both rented cars. She said it was relatively economical comparatively speaking to North America. I did notice at least one of the two cars (Peugeot and BMW if I recall correctly) used diesel fuel.

Nature and ecological responsibility

The entire area was very much in tune with the natural environment. It is considered normal to make responsible choices in terms of how much garbage a thing one desires might produce, and almost everywhere we went we saw that responsibility practiced as a matter of course. Even the main train terminals we passed through were relatively clean (Milan, Turin), more so than I expected. One exception was a portion of Turin itself, but more on that another time.

Additionally, many roofs of the stone houses in the small villages featured solar panels; renewable energy sources are widespread and windmills peppered parts of the mountain tops throughout the region.

I found the entire Aosta Valley clean, tidy, picturesque and very inviting despite the gloomy weather for part of our week there. Just lovely.

Scenery from Aosta on a sunny day

The weather in the valley and along the mountain sides was less than optimal. It was cooler than normal, rainier than normal and the ensuing fog did at times obscure the stunning scenery in this alpine region near the Swiss and France borders.

However, the weather didn’t detract too much from our exploring the area. There are plenty of activities you can take part in (as long as you have a car to get around). The area is rich with ruins, old and new(er) castles, museums and medieval villages which have been refurbished and made into appealing (not kitschy) tourist attractions. All in all, the local businesses seem to be thriving.

I lucked out a few times when the sun came out and took stunning pictures from our house’s backyard and neighbourhood, some of which I posted to various social media account. Here are some examples of what we were missing on the raining days:

I visited the castle Cly twice; once by myself which was a bit of an adventure, and another time with both my aunts. (Stay tuned for a separate account and stunning photos in a future newsletter.)

Here is a video of me standing in the backyard of the Airbnb house taking in the scenery (choose your favorite app to view):

Video: YouTube, Instagram, TikTok

Language adventures: Italiano, Français

Saint Denis, as the name implies, is French. I suspected the entire region was most likely bilingual with Italian and French which was, in fact, confirmed later when I spoke to a local man. In fact, I met a couple of people while at the Airbnb house, as well as a lovely dog who adopted us and graced us with her presence every day. Her name was Asia (pronounced Ah-see-ya) as the lady who tended to the lawn told us.

“She’s a little neglected by her own family,” the lady told me in Italian.

Well, Asia looked healthy enough, clean and fed, and she had a collar so I figured she was managing just fine. Having a vacation house near her own home was probably a bonus in terms of her social needs. Whenever she showed up at the side door, someone let her in and she reveled in all the attention she got. (We’re all dog people, and one of us was a vet and did a quick check on her gums. Asia was declared healthy.)

Asia was no dummy, either. She observed where the compost was buried (typical activity in these parts) from some obscure location out of our line of vision, and later, when the compost site was empty, she went and dug it all up and ate it. :)

I met another person while hanging around near the front of the house. He was an elderly man who came by to ask if we could move one of the cars. Another landscape worker was here and wanted to tend to the weeds. I was alone at the time, hanging laundry onto a rack I schlepped out of the laundry room to a sunny spot when he approached me. He asked if I understood Italian and I said “un poco” (a bit). Then he asked if I spoke French. “Un peu” I said again and what happened next surprised not only me, but also my aunt who heard the entire conversation through an open window.

“Your Italian is really good!,” she told me after I finished talking with the elderly man. “And the French too!”

I had flipped back and forth between both languages to make my point with the old local man, and he did the same. In fact, when he spoke French, I was reminded of the language’s musical beauty - no offense to Quebecois readers, but European French sounds very different than Canadian (or American) French. More melodious. And the pronunciation is clearer (at least to me).

“I think being surrounded by the language regularly has helped me remember,” I told my aunt and other family later. I knew if I spent more than a week in the Piedmont region, I would have become fluent relatively quickly in both romance languages.

One of the benefits of growing up in Europe inside an international (multilingual) family was that language acquisition felt normal, second-nature. (I grew up in Switzerland during my formative years.) My parents spoke Italian with each other throughout my life. I studied French right through University and the similarities between the two romance languages was obvious enough it made acquisition not particularly difficult. Despite not having used either language for a long time, the few opportunities I had in Italy to practice my skill showed jut how easy it is to get it back, much like riding a bicycle.

The elderly man and I had a lengthy conversation and I wished we could have extended it. I am ever so curious where (and how) local people live in these alpine villages, but he had to go and I went back to my laundry.

More to come in future newsletter. I have articles about two separate castles, a military fort and picturesque Medieval village, and more about Switzerland including a climb up into an iconic church tower in Zürich in the works.

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