Friday 31st May

Friday 31st May
Today in NYC it is Fra and Gorka’s wedding day. We hope they had a great day and will have a very happy life.

After breakfast we went up to the porch to work on the preparation of the jars of cherry jam which Stefania had made with the windfall cherries that had been gathered.
The process involves in cutting out some light material not circles and then securing them to the tops of the jar with a rubber band. Then a raffia tie is tied around the top and a label showing the ingredients, weight and use-by date. The jars are sold at a shop which sells artisanal products for Abruzzo in Pescara and also to the visitors who stay at LFMD.

 Then after lunch and a nap, we drove into Chieti. Here in Chieti Scalo, not far from the station, we found a post office to mail a couple of small gifts to Helen and Millie in England. Then we had a cappuccino in a nearby cafe and after that, drove into the center of the city which is very old and very charming.
Enjoying an afternoon cappuccino in Chieti







Scenes of the magnificent cathedral in Chieti

Some public posters giving information about changes to the streets and pedestrianization of the center of Chieti intended for public information and discussion.

The attractive streets of Chieti


The school festival where children and parents dressed up in costumes of different countrioes and danced to the tunes of their 'adopted' country.

We parked on a narrow street not far from the huge cathedral. We visited the cathedral which was open, there being a mass said in the crypt. The main part of the cathedral was empty but it is extensively decorated and enormous in dimension.
After visiting the cathedral, we walked through their pedestrian precinct, past the theater. Many billboards had been erected showing the plans for further pedestrianization and these were being studied and discussed by the local populace. The street was lined with stately old buildings and some had shopping arcades in the ground floors. Further along in a small square there was a festival taking place which involved the parents and children of local schools. Each group had dressed up in the costume of a country such as Mexico, Israel, Senegal, North American Indian,etc. Then each group came out in turn and performed a dance routine to the sounds fo a small band. 

At this time we received the nightly call from Stefania to come back for dinner!! So we fund the car again and drove back to LFMD.

Here, Stefania had prepared a dinner with a special hand-made pasta called Pasta di Pecora which was made by shepherds, hence the name. It was topped with a slightly piquant sauce, delicious. The we had a cheese called ‘Goloso’ (I think) which had olives, peppers and other theming stocks embedded in it and was also just a little spicy,
After dinner, the three of us finished off the preparation of the final batch of cherry jam jars.
Then it was off to bed.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Cugnoli Diary the first days.

We left home at 3.30 p.m. and made our way to JFK where the check in was quick and easy. Flight boarding was also smooth and the flight after quite a long taxi took off about 45 minutes late but made us some time en route and landed in LHR at 7.15 a.m. We had quite a tight transfer with security lines long at that time of the day but the speedy formalities with optical readers moved things alongside and we made the flight to Rome reasonably comfortably. This was an easy flight and contrary to last time, Rome also had optical readers for passport control and so we were soon through formalities and our bags were delivered double quick. Then were off to the Hertz counter where, despite our being early and my having messed up the booking with my new Hertz Gold membership, they were very helpful, gave us an upgrade to a larger car and got us on our way early. We were soon on the autostrada around Rome and on to the road to L’Aquila and Pescara. We stopped for coffee and a snack on the...
Read more

Saturday 25 May

Saturday 25th May This morning we had breakfast in house and went up to try to help Stefania early. We managed to secure a couple of jobs, MAC helping Nadia set up the party room and me cutting up vegetables for the food for the party on Sunday. When this was done we were summarily dismissed and told to go out and have an adventure.  So we took off for the surrounding villages first Cugnoli, then Alanno, where we had coffee and a piece of pizza and talked to the owner of the bar/restaurant then on to Nosciano and then Rosciano. We ended up back at the airfield where we talked again to the old gentleman who owns it. On the way home we passed Tiberio, the winery owned by Christiana. Stefania asked us if we would like to go to a movie this evening. It is about a mafia penitenti who was a member of the mafia and was harassed by them and then decided to inform on many of his former ‘colleagues’. This resulted in a huge trial when many mafiosi were convicted. Of course, this...
Read more

Tuesday 21st and Wednesday 22nd May

Image
Tuesday 21st and Wednesday 22nd May On Tuesday we took it rather easy and did very little except catch up with blog posting and relaxing at LFMD. Stefania had gone into Pescara in an attempt to meet up with Daniela before she returned to Germany. It was not a good day for her. Despite repeated calls to Daniela and requests for her to meet, Daniela eventually just bade Stefania farewell and said she was off back to Germany. The relationship between Stefania and Daniela is at a low point and it is to be hoped that Daniela will reflect and show some more respect to her parents. We decided to go out at about 5 p.m. to see some of the neighborhood and to try to have dinner out. We found a Michelin starred restaurant called La Bandeira in a village not too far called Civitella Casanova and decided to see if we could have dinner there. The drive there was the usual tortuous windy hilly route made more tricky by the bright setting sun. When we got there we were greeted by a very friend...
Read more