An entry in the TFS Travel Journal.
Woke up at -UGH- 6:15 am to get to the Rome airport in time to switch cars and pick up Wendy’s sister Karen and her husband Adam. Not a very pretty drive, but very little traffic. Dropped off Wendy to retrieve the kids, while Milton went to retrieve our BMW, as was promised to us. Let’s just say that things didn’t go as planned, but after 1 hour, 15 minutes, we were the proud (and much more comfortable) renters of an Opel (GM) Omega, which was actually darn nice.
Sped off back home and made it in remarkable time, even allowing for the time to show our guests the nearby ostrich farm. We snacked on some of the salamis and cheeses we had bought in Norcia, Italy. The kids showered and, thus refreshed, we all set off for San Gemini, Italy and its medieval festival.
Quite a nice, small hilltop stone town (hmm, where have I seen this before?), which was mostly dormant for the midday siesta, especially with this being Sunday, but decorated with a plethora of, well, medieval-looking flags. We lunched at the only open place we could find, the Taverna del’arco, which had been transposed for the festival so it contained only long tables and benches. We ordered a hodgepodge of dishes, about 3/4 of the whole menu actually, and were pretty happy with the results. The picciarelli (close enough) was the winner — a thick, spaghetti-like pasta in a red meat sauce, that was homemade and delicious. We had ordered pizza, but there were some words after “pizza” on the menu that we didn’t understand, and it turned out to be triangles of thick bread with ham in one, and chunks of cheese in the other. The various bruschettas were quite good, though. We finished off with the dolce misto, which included a chocolate-pistachio biscotti and some anise cookies that were so good we wrapped the extras in a napkin and took them with us.
We then walked the sleepy town, stopping in the many galleries to see the various art on display for the festival. Some interesting works, but nothing we had to own. We were all starting to fade, so we zipped home and relaxed for the afternoon, with K & A napping off their jet-lag, and M & W reading in the cozy garden with the wonderful view.
Milton then went out for a twilight jog (though it was more like walking up all the hills and jogging down) and we all played lateral thinking games and enjoyed being on vacation.