(Actual) Visit to Larino

It was a very quiet, laid back kind of weekend here.  I took advantage of two days of sunshine to do several loads of laundry (so our clothes could dry hanging out on the balcony).  Last Friday we took a little drive to Larino, again.  This time, we managed not to get ourselves stuck on a dead-end street.  I did, however, go back to the streets where we had our little nightmare experience, just to take photos of the area:  

The street where we got stuck because someone thought he could make the right turn further up…

The infamous dead end…technically not a dead end…

…since you could theoretically turn right

We discovered that Larino looks more interesting online than it is in reality.  We wanted to visit the Ducal Palace (which is both a museum and the town's municipal hall), and the duomo.  According to the info I saw online, both were open; in reality, neither was.  We did get inside the Palace, only to discover that there was no one at the entrance, and we could not find a way to access the museum which according to posted signs should have been on the 3rd floor.  We ended up just walking around the outside of the building a couple of times.

The cathedral (incidentally located very near where we got stuck on our last visit) was also closed up, unfortunately.  

To the left of the cathedral was an open doorway, which we walked through; we came down a short passageway into a little courtyard:

Interesting, but we really did want to see inside.  Perhaps we will go again sometime.  

We did get to visit another nearby small church - the Church of San Francesco, which dates from the 14th century.  It was very dark inside, so the photos I took didn't turn out very well.  But these will give you an idea of what it was like:

Honestly, the town wasn't really very interesting aside from these two things; it looks better driving into it than actually being there.  I half-heartedly snapped a few other pictures on our way back to the car:

Their tower is not as cool as the tower in our town!

Last night I made homemade tomato sauce; I remembered watching Stanley Tucci make a sauce with his mother on Searching for Italy that had a base of onions, carrots, and celery, so I tried to replicate that, more or less.  I chopped up some of the above, plus garlic, and sautéed that in butter and olive oil before adding fresh tomatoes that I'd peeled and cut up, as well as a can of diced tomatoes.  I let it all simmer for about 45 minutes, then served it over capellini.  I don't know why I always thought making homemade sauce would be hard; it's really not.

We don't really have any firm plans for this week; the weather is looking to be a bit iffy every day, unfortunately.  Still toying with the idea of going to Rome for a few days, just for fun.  We'll see!

(Almost) a Visit to Larino

 “We’ll travel for miles in our Saturday smiles, And then we'll move on, But we will remember long after Saturday's gone…” 

- The Sandpipers, Come Saturday Morning

Aside from my appointment last Thursday, at which I submitted my citizenship recognition application, it’s been a fairly quiet week for us; we really haven’t gone anywhere, aside from a trip into the big town to get new SIMS for our cellphones. We were having some extremely irritating issues with Orange, the provider of the SIMS I purchased before we left the US, so scrapped them in favor of WindTre. Our cell service is now approximately 1000% better.

While the temperatures here are pretty decent - ranging from high 50s to mid-60s Fahrenheit, we’ve had a lot of fog and drizzling rain off and on - so waking up to sunshine this morning was quite a treat.

It being Saturday, it was Market Day. We spent quite a bit more than €6 this time, but on the other hand, we set out with a list:

We were able to get almost everything right on the street, although we did have to stop inside our favorite mercato for the orange juice, eggs and a few other things I didn’t have on the above list. We didn’t see the bread truck today, so we decided to drop off our shopping and walk down to the panetteria for a loaf of fresh bread. Incidentally, when we got back to our apartment, this was parked right in front of our door:

When I say “right in front of our door,” I mean I could kick the tire from the open door. Why was it parked there, you ask? Because Italy, that’s why.

As I was saying: we made our way down to the bake shop and purchased the desired fresh loaf; I also grabbed a basic (but delicious) "donut" type pastry to munch on the walk home. It was sprinkled with granular, not powdered, sugar. Next to the bakery, I stopped to take this picture of the view (the bake shop was to my right):

Since the weather was surprisingly nice, I was able to hang our laundry outside for a change (although as of this writing it’s still not dry, thanks to the humidity; sigh). We decided to take advantage of the (mostly) sunny weather and drive into Larino, a large comune (compared to ours, anyway) about half an hour away. It has a Ducal Palace, a duomo (cathedral), and the ruins of an ancient Roman amphitheater. We’d previously tried to visit, but turned back due to heavy fog. 

Today we had no problem getting there. The problem was (as it so often is around here) driving down tiny, winding streets in search of parking. Paolo ignored the public parking lot near the palace in favor of seeking out on-street parking closer to it. Against my advice*, he turned down a very tiny street ending at a T, at which he chose to make a right turn - into an even smaller dead end street. When I say “even smaller,” I mean we could not have fully opened the car doors, at least without taking out someone’s front windows. I felt downright claustrophobic. There was literally no way to turn around. It was a nightmare.

After much maneuvering, several scrapes and dings to the car, and what seemed like an eternity passing (although in all likelihood it was probably "only" about 20 minutes), he finally managed to back down to another little alley where he could swing the car around and get us headed back the way we came. I wish I could describe this better for you, but a) I had to cover my eyes - I literally could not watch; and b) I’m just too traumatized. Actually, we were both so shaken by this experience that we decided to just go home, and save the sights of Larino for another day.

*For the record: I did refrain from saying, “I told you so.” Out loud, anyway.