Monday and Tuesday, 29 & 30 September, and then Naples on 1 October
Each day began with a cornetto and caffè at the bar. Actually, first thing was to glance off to the West to see La Maiella Mountain, beautiful in the morning sun, especially when snow covers the top. (Not yet though, thankfully!) We walked around town quite a bit and believe it or not, on Monday, while walking down one of the alleys talking, heard a woman yell out: “Is that an American I hear?” Turns out she and her husband are from South Jersey although Nicola, the husband, was born in Italy. They had been coming to Italy for months at a time every year since 2003. This time, they’d been here since March! But then, he, and maybe both, are Italian citizens. A caffè in their house and an hour later, we headed back down the hill to our apartment.
For a town with a dropping population, we were amazed at the amount of renovation and preservation construction going on. The hotel, which has not changed since before our first visit in 2014 and was closed because it was crumbling, is still crumbling but now has some reinforcement to hold it together. And no, we still don’t know if the intention is to rebuild and reopen!
Then there is the open face cliff up a mountain overlooking the original restaurant, now closed, and across from the still frequented bar. There were workers up on the face drilling holes and mounting steel cables and webbing to hold the rocks in place as they break away from the mountain. Look closely and you can see the high pressure air hose and the dust from drilling along with what looks like white dots all over the face. Those are the mechanisms attached to the rods drilled into the face and which hold the cables and netting in place.
Tuesday, pretty much the same except that Cousin Vincenzo Ambrosini, our renown wine connoisseur who spends much of his time traveling around Italy judging wine and olive oil competitions, stopped in to see us. We had lunch at the bar and had planned on supper at the only restaurant in Monteferrante. Come to find out, the restaurant is closed Mon-Thu evenings! Oh well…
Nothing has changed at Adolfo’s house which his daughters Gabriella and Cinzia (and periodically, the Altemoses) stay when in Monteferrante. The door to the left takes you into the one & only restaurant in town – the space once occupied by Cousin Adolfo’s restaurant which had been closed since before 2014 although Adolfo opened it up when the Ambrosini’s threw a 70th birthday party for Jim and Welcome Party for the Altemoses in 2016! Adolfo by the way, was the first of my Italian relatives we made contact with back in 2014. He died a few years after we last saw him in 2016. He was a nephew of my mother’s father.
We began our trip to Napoli at 6:00 am Wednesday with a ride to the bus station by Antonino and Gabriella. We had time to have a coffee together and some rather tearful goodbyes! Our bus left Castel di Sangro at 7:55 am and we had a scenic ride to Tavoli where we turned South on the A-1 towards Napoli.
It was hard to forget Napoli once we had returned. To cross an oh-so-busy street, you just had to cut into the traffic by holding up your hand and walking in front of the cars and motorbikes! Try doing that in the States! And the drivers here seemingly think nothing of it. They simply drive on.
After arriving at our apartment with our luggage and walking up a hill for what seemed an eternity to me, we were exhausted. We finally found our apartment with the help of the owner. He still had to clean it but he let us put our bags inside and we ventured out for a walk and to check the area out. We eventually jumped on the hop on/hop off bus! It was good to sit down and enjoy the ride. This helped us figure out where we wanted to go while here in Naples.
As was typical of Italy, many tourists were out and about buying things, looking at things and enjoying the sites.
We found a place to have lunch, Antonio & Antonio, which we had found on our first trip to Naples. The first time here they were located in a different area and the food was great. The second time they had moved to a road along the lungomare (seaside) and the food was still good. This time they have grown quite a bit to accommodate the tourists and the food left a little bit to be desired. In other words, cater to the tourists, move the food, to heck with the “old” ways.
On our 2nd day in Naples, we decided to take a tour to Herculaneum (Ercolano) and Pompei which was pretty fabulous. Our tour guide, Diego, was full of information and I only wish I could remember half of what he said. However, we have a ton of photos and lots of narrative so we are going to push that post out to tomorrow.
Buona notte e a domani. Good night and until tomorrow!
Amazing!