Wednesday, 16 June: Visit with the Famiglia

Visit to the family! Up early and start with breakfast in the upstairs sunroom of the Hotel Bolivar. (Quick plug on the hotel… clean room, good service, moderately priced, great location and walking distance of most all must-see attractions).
Quick walk to the Rome Termini train station. Jump on train 12157, track 23 toward Castro-Pofi about an hour 15 minutes south. We saw a beautiful countryside full of olives, gardens, fruit orchards and vineyards. Along the way we also spotted the occasional ruin, the Aqueducts bringing water to the city and many walled, hill top cities. We were amazed at the many small farms given the relatively high population in both rural areas and the many small towns and cities. Farmers fit their fields in everywhere, wedged between terrain and roads/railways and houses. The other surprising thing was that virtually all the same plants and trees – native and non-native – that we grow in Paseo de Robles are here too!

We reached our destination train station of Castro and were immediately greeted at the train by Pietro, Massimo and family. We pack into two small cars (seriously small) and head to Pietro’s home. We are introduced to everyone including my Grandmother’s cousins (three sisters). Thankfully, Pietro’s youngest daughter spoke just enough English and with my bad Spanish plus a dictionary we got along fine. We sat down to an amazing lunch starting with an enormous plate of melon and prosciutto along with roasted peppers, crusty bread, hard salami, water and homemade wine. It was a locally produced red wine of some varietal which we couldn’t figure out due to our limited language skills. The second course of a large bowl of pasta (shaped like a twisted cigarette) with a beef and pork ragu with fresh cherry tomato followed. Yum! To top it off was fresh parmesan and ground red pepper powder (in a blackberry jelly jar – take care with that one!) which gave it a great kick. Next was a braised roast beef covered with a carrot pan sauce and served with green peas and mixed mushrooms. I didn’t think I could eat any more but along came baby romaine salad tossed with olive oil and lemon. Finally, we had a multiple flavors of gelato – as full as I was I ate it ALL. Thinking we were done… not… along came a huge platter of fresh watermelon and apricots from the garden. We have never tasted anything so sweet and delicious. We topped it all off with sweetened espresso.

Next we were off to visit the ancient hilltop town of Castro de Volsci. What a beautiful little town of stone houses wedged cheek by jowl, brick streets and window flower boxes full of beautiful red/pink/purple flowers. With a valley view for miles around the realities of Italian city-state politics was obvious. Every hilltop had a castle and walled city around it. As peaceful and beautiful as we know it today, clearly the effort to build the houses, churches and walls on these bluffs would have never been spent without need. We returned to Piertro’s house to end up our day with the family and a serenade by Massimo on the organette. We made it back to the train and arrived in Rome just in time for dinner – although the splendor of the outbound trip was largely lost on us – we slept the whole way home! Overall great people, great food and no matter what happens over the next week this day made the trip worth the effort to get here. With luck one day they will come from Italy to the US.

After a day like that could we possibly be hungry again!? The answer of, of course, is yes. We ended up at another outside café and enjoyed a light meal of antipasti and pizza, a liter of a local house white wine and later a bottle of Chianti Classico billed as the 600 year anniversary wine for the winery selling it. Not a bad run; I’ve only got 3 more years to go to celebrate the 6 year anniversary at August Ridge!

Today’s story will come out a little later; suffice it to say that it involved a lot of walking and a lot of pictures of a fat little baby…

Ciao! Jill

PS: We've sort of got the picture thing down. We will keep working on it...