Here I set on my patio, the waning moon overhead and tons of stars as it is
dark here in the hills of central Italy and the province of Abruzzo, with my
friend and my cup of coffee, listening to the rooster to my left and my right
(finally) and dogs off in the distance, watching the raising sun begin to light
the tops of the mountains in the distance. We arrived in the little village of
Valle San Giovanne in central Italy, about two and a half hours east of Rome,
yesterday. This is the real deal. My instructions were to drive into town, more
like a settlement if that is what you call the smallest grouping of houses with
a store or two, and look for the Tabac shop or just ask anybody where Paolo is.
When we first entered town on the right of the road setting in front of the
small, not yet open, café where a half dozen older gentleman and, in mostly
English, we asked where we could find Paolo. They all pointed about 50 yards up
the street on the left at the sign with the T indicating a Tabac shop. There we
met Paolo, the proprietor of the Tabac and speaker of excellent English, and he
in turn took us to the house that Stefano built. We walked from his shop down
the hill through the square, not really a square but a wide spot in the road,
about a hundred yards, turned left through a little alley to the back side of
the building on the street and there was the house that Stefano built. A very
comfortable two bedroom with a large patio facing the mountains and some real
ruins.
The trip from Mykonos was relatively painless and after we picked up our
rental car, a cast off from Hertz, but at less than a hundred euro a week, who
cares the cover on the seatbelt clip is missing and the seats have seen some
salt water bathing suits, we did what all Romans do at rush hour. We sat in
traffic. Once we cleared traffic about a hour later, we were off roaring down
the autostrada and called it a day about nine pm in L’Aquila. We stayed in the
Hotel Canadian. Why? Because in the dark hill country of Italy with winding
roads and crowded streets, the big neon sign was like a beacon and led us
straight to it. Searching for a place to stay, at night, in strange little towns
can be challenging of you want. I did not.
Most European hotels are very small. Think, linen closet size and
bathrooms much smaller. So we were surprised to find a very large room with a
king bed and, for Europe, a huge bathroom. Europeans have historically been
bath people, but have come over to the shower of late. So, most hotels have made
various arrangements with their tub’s to accommodate the shower water spraying
around, as Vicki says, “losey goosey”. They seem to do everything but what seems
to be the easiest answer, a shower curtain. Here they have the swinging glass
door method. It just has one shortfall in this bathroom.
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| this door is designed to swing all the way to the tub |
Paulo checked us out on everything and said we needed another bottle of gas
and we should just go to the hardware store and say Casa de Stefano and gas and
they will come change the bottle.
Let me point out that Paulo is not the owner but just a friend of Stephan
Ulissi the American owner who normally lives in Maryland, just outside DC, but
is presently in Germany on a one year contract from his retirement being a
shrink at the Army hospital. Therefore, it is our responsibility to get the gas
on behalf of Stefano.
So I walked up to the hardware store. The “stores” in the town, all three
of them, are about the size of the average American living room. I met the owner
and told him I needed gas at the “cassa de Stefano” and he grabed a bottle,
locked the door, threw the bottle in his little car, drove down the street,
backed in the alley, changed the bottle, checked to make sure everything was
working and said goodbye.
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| coffee with friends |
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| the square |
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| the alley |
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| stefanos |
We spend our days being lazy. I do not read at home but on these trips I
consume books. My kindle has died and I am reading them on my smartass phone. Vicki is and always has ground through books, but on these trips she picks up
the pace too. I got stuck and went through a whole series of WEB Griffin. How
does all that war stuff go on and no good guy gets killed. So we read, go for
walks, do road trips through the hills to various little towns or just to
nowhere. The towns, even the ones with restored castles are neat, clean and
empty. Even in the destination town of Civitela de Tronto with a great walled
town had only two restaurants, a couple of stores, a pharmacy, and two
small hotels and half of them were closed for the year. But having so few stores
compared to Tuscany and other areas is a indication that not a lot of people
visit here. This is not a foreign tourist destination so English is not even
spoken by the school children, which makes for come challenges but not a show
stopper. Down the road in Campli the most exciting thing was a film crew with a
drone. We went to the big city of Teramo to do our shopping and look around.
This ain’t Tuscany. It is a large university town, but there are no menu’s in
three languages, barely in one. Meaning that the offer of the day is limited and
changes every day. There are no signs saying “WiFi” here and the tourist office
closes at 13:00 as we found out at 16:00 when all the stores reopened after
lunch. We had a mediocre lunch, walked around, stocked up at the grocery store
and headed back home. When the tourist office was open we found they do not
speak English and a have little material in any language including
Italian.\
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| tourist office in Arti |
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| any time I find one of these in a town it becomes my favorite town. serving roast pork and rotisserie chickens |
I was determined to eat in a restaurant. We have had all our meals in and
so it was time to have a lunch out, but a real restaurant. We looked and could
not find one. A few café’s serving sandwiches, a pizzeria or two, (ps: they
normally do not serve piazza in the day time. Just food.) A trattoria.
Singular, just one. So I drove to Montoria to the restaurant San something. You
would not even know that it was there but we had seen it a few days ago. The
chef meets us at the door and explains in all Italian that they only serve fish
and today just one type of fish, Baccala. Great, “We’ll take it”. Whatever
Baccala is “Antipasto?” “Sure, we’ll take it.” Then they began to trot out the
dishes. Four antipasto, all Baccala fish, cold, hot, fried, and something with
red peppers and...Ok, we are full. To bad, there is more coming. Then the
prima, pasta. We eat some and set it aside. Then the secondo, a big piece of
fish. All excellent. Not a vegetable one. They offer desert but we decline but
do accept the espresso that comes with cookies. By the time we roll we are
friends with the only other couple in the restaurant, with no English, but super
fast on the Google Translate. We got the bill. It was not cheap. However, if
we had known the wine was only 6 euro a bottle we would have doubled down on
that.
Ok, I think I have had my restaurant fix.
Ok, I think I have had my restaurant fix.
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| The queen of the Future Home Makers of America never thought she would be plucking feather out of a chickens butt. |
