Sulmona

Today we took the bus to Sulmona. It is a 45 minute ride on a beautiful, narrow road with hairpin turns and tunnels. We generally took our half of the road out of the middle. Sulmona is the home of Ovid and homage is paid to him in a large number of coffee shops, streets and restaurants. I bet there are some statues also. Earlier this month Sulmona has their annual jousting contest and medieval festival. The pictures of it look amazing. The thought of the crowds not so much. If only we knew someone with a terrace overlooking the piazza. Today there were only a few venders in the hugh Piazza Garibaldi, but just a week ago it was filled with sand, carefully graded for the horses. Sulmona is divided into twelve families. These families used to fight, but now they joust.

Besides Ovid, Sulmona is know for a candy called, “confetti”. I think it is almonds covered in different kinds of chocolate or hard candy. I bought it for lots of friends last year, but never had any. It seems that it may be mostly to look at as it is made into flowers and other things like lady bugs or bees. It seems you get these and keep them. It is possible to buy the traditional confetti, not all this colored flower stuff.


There are many churches in Sulmona. We painted some of them last year, but this year we went inside. There are remnants of frescos, amazing sculptures and paintings. The churches all seemed smaller inside than out.

We found an art supply store and I was able to get a piece of heavy watercolor paper big enough for the giant frame I accidentally had my friends get at IKEA. I got a tube of acrylic paint and used it to put a tone on the extra paper. I will try doing pastel on top of that. I got another can of fixative, giving me four extra cans, and some charcoal. That was my main goal of the day along with going to the churches.



Across the small piazza from the art store is a very swank gourmet food shop. Look closely at the items on the shelf and see if you can find something Americans would not consider the least bit gourmet.

 There is the old and new interest as always. This wi-fi hot spot is in the courtyard of a church. We found one of the remaining gates into the city and parts of the old wall. I like Sulmona. It is fun to walk around. Most of the shops are too expensive, but it is fun to window shop. We chose to not go on market day and it was much less crowded. That made it more enjoyable for us. There are Roman fountains everywhere so there is no need to carry water.



We walked all around the old, center of town. The most amazing thing was the the public restroom was closed from 12:15 till 4:00pm. I can understand businesses shutting down, but the restrooms? The tourist information place also shut down.

 This tree has totally grown around this post. This is the park where we depart and also catch the bus.

When we got home, we old folks went right to sleep for two hours.