Tuesday 16th August

Breakfast on the decking

Clive took Si to pick up the car. We then drove into Sulmona to try another of the restaurants in the Gourmet guide called Gino. We had  the E30 local speciality menu and they made Josie vegetarian options where necessary. We had bruschetta with pigs cheeks (very thin raw ham) and preserved garlic shoots Josie had bruschetta with tomatoes.  We then had two separate pasta courses, the first was thick spaghetti with courgette and courgette flower sauce flavoured with saffron and then normal sized spaghetti with a lamb sauce.  Josie had the courgette sauce again so good job she liked it. We thought we had finished but then they bought out the main courses. A plate of different fried cheeses for Josie and lamb for us with potatoes and a slice of aubergine.

In the afternoon we drove into the mountains to a lake. We followed signs but failed to find the tourist office but we did have to pull over to let a funeral procession go past. They were carrying the coffin through the streets followed by loads of people. We then went back to the lake and went for a swim. On the way back we had a scrape in the car pulling over on a narrow road to let cars past. We’ve slightly dented and scratched our car and the parked car we touched is scratched.  We left a note with Si’s phone number. Coming back into town we had another knock and lost the glass out of our wing mirror. We then went to the first supermarket we saw which turned out to be really cheap and nasty. We got the bare minimum to have an omelette and some sliced bread for breakfast.

We told Clive about the damage to the car and he is going to take us to someone he knows tomorrow to have a look at the wing mirror. He also said no one in Italy has ever left a number after hitting a parked car! There was a concert in the square just outside our flat, a singer, drummer, double bass and keyboard playing mostly latin swing type music.