Our first full day in Tagliacozzo!
I had a pretty good sleep, waking at around 8 o clock, which is a bit of a lie in for us! Our bedroom opens up onto a balcony outside. Pushing out the glass doors and then the wooden doors straight out into the new day. I never tired of this view.
The view from our balcony is superb, again photos do it no justice. Steep mountains covered with trees in front to our right with the landmark of a sculpture of a cross on top. At night, this cross is lit up, guiding us from the town to our own special “estate”. Below and to the left of our balcony is the village estate we live in. Ancient houses sporadically thrown wherever they could find a rock or bit of ground in the steep incline. Flowers, plants, grapes and even boxes of cat litter boxes decorate the outside of the tiny houses. The front of our house is emblazoned with a golden picture of Mary, Jesus’ mother. In fact, on our walk down to town, we notice grottos and dedications of all sorts to Jesus and Mary.
I can smell something nice! Simon has got the coffee machine working. We set up the table on our balcony with bitter sweet peaches(like you’ve never tasted before!), crispy bread, creamy mozzarella, salami, soft cheese and ham. Divine.
I’ve been typing this diary up on my iPad. It must have overheated but it cleverly warned me and shut down!
An excuse, so, to go down town!
We spent the day just wandering. The guidebook for The Abruzzo region tells us to throw out the guidebook! We did just that and discovered pristine churches, outdoor churches, quirky shops selling leather, jewellery and pretty paper goods, outdoor markets, butchers, cake shops, delis and the most amazing gellato. It had the best ice-cream ever. I had a dark choc and nutella cone, Simon went for the yoghurt and coconut one. The owner was very proud of his ice-cream and brought us out to the kitchen and showed us how they were all made. He kept giving us spoonfuls of the stuff and rattling away to us in Italian, we sat at his cafe bar for about 3 hours, just reading and chatting.
We had our dinner here in the Square in ” Al Corradino di Svevi” which translates cleverly as “The usual place”. I opted for the ravoli with Ragu and Simon went for the Gnocchi mushroom thing. Who won? I think I did, just. We had starters of suppli and a healthy looking brushchetta. The starters were 1€ each! The whole bill came to €22 with a large glass of wine and 2 bottles of water!
We promised ourselves we would have a crepe nutella from this enticing stall. A very happy lady who loves her job makes crepes all night long here. When we wandered past the first time, she caught our eyes in a flirty way, beckoning us to come back But, alas, we were too full.
Tomorrow, we travel on the train to Sulmona, a large city of 25,000 about an hour away. It created the sugar almond things that you get at weddings traditionally and has a museum dedicated to these almonds. It has an open archaeological museum, which seems worth a visit. Also, some highly recommended eateries.
The walk back from the town up to where our house is seemed slightly more easier tonight. Probably, in the head but I feel my thighs feeling it already. I saw a woman jogging through our village today. Madness. Slow down, woman, chill out. Everyone else is!