11 Jan – Exploring Casoli and surrounds
Casoli from the road and one of the steep roads
Some of the roads must have a rise between 20 and 30 degrees which is a bit nerve racking, especially as we are expecting rain, if not ice and snow.
View of mountains from balcony (only really sunny day!)
On Thursday we drove to Chieti, but got so confused trying to get into the medieval town for parking, we ended up at the equivalent of Chadstone (although a lot smaller) and had fun window shopping instead. On Friday we drove through some amazing mountain peaks (up to 1100m) to Castel di Sangro. We found a real party atmosphere and lots of cute boys carrying snowboards and skis for the nearby slopes. Whilst we felt a chill in the air, it was still about 5 degrees. Their castle was high up on the hill and there was ice on that road so we couldn’t get close unfortunately. However, the churches in town (and we saw five) were quite amazing.
On Saturday we traveled north along the Adriatic coast to Atri, which has some Roman ruins, equally stunning churches and curious archeological and ethnographical museums.
Atri duomo
Yesterday we went to Roccascalegna on recommendation of Assunta (a local and friend of the owners). We were most impressed and quite surprised that none of the Abruzzo tourist information or our travel guides mentioned it. An 11thC castle was built on a jutting mountain peak and a town formed around it in the 11th and extended later in the 15thC.
The castle
After those glorious views we drove to San Vito Chietino on the Adriatic and found a lovely country house for a very late Italian lunch full of locals. (We finally got our meal at 2.50pm but it was worth the wait).
posted by Most Liveable at 3:15 AM
3 Comments:
You don't actually describe what you were doing at midnight - was there fire works etc?, did you kiss local boys and girls (i'm assuming Tammy wrote the text about the snowboarders - unless you want to tell us something Mark?
Iain
We had Chinese for dinner (a rare occurance in Europe as there isn't many restaurants and they are pretty bad) before watching the latest Harry Potter film. After the film, we walked along the promenade to watch the fireworks at midnight. We didn't kiss anybody (except each other) as it was full of drunken French, Italian and Spanish kids letting off illegal fireworks. Overall a very satisfactory new year
it sounds very scary and hair raising. although the scenery looks beautiful. Peter has just arrived will talk later. Mum
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