Today we took a Sunday drive through the surrounding countryside, to get a look at some of the nearby comuni. We stopped first in Santa Croce di Magliano, which seems to us much larger that our own little town - although that isn’t saying much. But it does appear to have more restaurants and shops. Also - Padre Pio once took shelter here to avoid a “violent storm,” as per the sign on this house:
We walked around the town center and I took a few pictures. Of course, it being Sunday, all the shops and many of the restaurants appeared to be closed. We plan on coming back to this place on a weekday to explore further.
We also drove through Rotello, as we’ve driven by it several times and it looked interesting - at least from the road. The comune looks large based on the number of buildings - but quite a lot seemed to be empty and/or in various states of disrepair. I just looked them up online, and it appears there are less than 1200 people living there. The streets were very narrow in some parts, and there was just something about the place that seemed mildly creepy, so we didn’t park and wander around this time.
Perhaps the creepiness was just Halloween-related, since today was Halloween. We were very surprised to see several small groups of children out trick-or-treating; I was under the impression that this is mostly an American thing. But it seems to be catching on in Italy, from what I’ve read online. Interestingly, only a handful of kids wore costumes; those that did were girls, and they were all dressed as witches (streghe). If we’d known there would be trick-or-treating, we’d have picked up some candy to hand out.
Today I made our main meal of the day in the afternoon, Italian-style. I managed, with our limited cookware, to make pasta (vermicelli) topped with shrimp and zucchini, and warmed up some screppelle we found at the Carrefour. For dinner we just had eggs (they were originally supposed to be omelets but they turned into scrambled eggs) with cheese and diced peppers, and some bread.
On our walk about town after la cena (supper), we expanded our usual route a bit and discovered a little bar we hadn't noticed previously, and stopped there for a glass of white wine each. The weather has been warm enough that sitting outside is not a problem. Total cost: €2,50 (about $2.89). In the US, if you paid that for two glasses of wine, you’d be drinking vinegar - here, even the cheap wine tastes pretty good!
We then continued our walk and ended up at our favorite watering hole - we hadn’t actually planned to go there, but saw that (for the first time since we’ve been here) there was a large crowd outside, so wanted to see what was going on. It turned out that there was a big calcio (soccer) game - Roma vs Milano - being shown on a big screen tv on the outside patio; hence the crowd. We decided to sit and watch for a bit with the locals:
It was hard to tell exactly who most of the local folks were rooting for - I think it was Milano; in any event I decided to root for them, simply because their players were very good looking. We ended up getting home about 10:30-11PM or so - that’s the latest we’ve been out in ages. We couldn’t find the Sky Sports channel on our own tv, so could not watch the rest of the game. Tomorrow is a public holiday here - La Festa di Ognissanti (All Saints’ Day); many people go to the cemeteries, and the shops are closed.