6th Jan - Italy and we’ve had an epiphany

It’s been a little while since we last had an update as we’ve been on the road from Nice, France (for New Years Eve) to Casoli, Italy (our last home stay). This one is a little different as it’s through a family member.

Well you’re probably curious as to how we spent New Years Eve – certainly not in 43 degree weather as I heard Melbourne had. However, we did have our best weather day, since the cool weather came, of 14 degrees and full sun from 9am to 2pm that day. Whilst we had a few sprinkles of rain around 8pm that night, it wasn’t nasty and was over with for the Big Event at midnight. We took the coast road through all the fancy seaside towns including Cannes, and stopped off in Agay for a beautiful lunch right on the beachfront. Then we crawled through the traffic to Nice and arrived to find our hotel room had problems. So we got upgraded to 4-star next door! My first ever upgrade. However, always read the fineprint, as the following day we were hit for 38E ($65AUD) for breakfast as it wasn’t included. Ouch!

Then Jan 1^st, we headed into Italy and made it to Pisa, which is definitely still leaning but much more secure now and you can walk up it (although we didn’t). We found a hotel literally 1min walk from there and got a view from our room, if we stuck our head out quite far. The day of the 1^st was pretty miserable but the following morning was glorious and you can see our shot below.

The next day we headed to Siena, which Tamara missed out on ten years ago when traveling with Tahnee and Greg. It is a very well preserved medieval town with an amazing central square (Piazza del Campo) which actually has 9 exits (to honour the 9 city councilors who planned it in the 1100’s). And, of course, you cannot go past the black and white striped Duomo, which seems almost Moroccan/ Arabic in design. After walking up, around, through and curving the very steep town, we found a lovely restaurant and had traditional food. Mark had pork cutlet with a dessert wine and pine nut sauce. I had lamb rack with tarragon & almond crust and sweet and sour baked capsicum. We’ve been very impressed by the food quality and also the prices have been very reasonable.

On the 3^rd we headed into Assisi, of St Francis fame and saw the Basilica San Francesco with its special nativity scene (very lifelike) in the front garden and interesting sculpture exhibition (we assumed it was temporary). The Basilica and tomb of St Francis are obviously very important sites for Italians as we saw over 100 people waiting to view the tomb and they were quite emotional, even the younger ones. We also saw a group of about 30 visiting nuns – surprised we haven’t seen more, given the amount of churches we’ve visited around the place.

From Assisi, we traveled to the Adriatic coast and escaped the rain belt for a few hours. I think we found the last bed in San Benedetto that was open as most are closed for the season. The next morning, we hit the road for Casoli.

The drive started fine, but we hit snow and a huge rain belt as we were about 2 hrs out. It just got more miserable as we approached and we got lost on several turns off the smaller highways as the signposts don’t always correspond with the road. Eventually we arrived and met up with Maddalena who explained about the place. She doesn’t speak any English and we don’t really speak any Italian (although Tamaras now got a few words which probably sound a bit French or Spanish to the Italians!). We stumbled through and settled in.

PS The Epiphany in the blog title refers to today being a National Holiday in Italy for Epiphany day.