Rocca di Messo

Another must see: the town where La Strade was filmed. This town has a great coffee shop and a market that focuses on furniture and antiques. It is an alpine ski town not so different from Stowe or Aspen. In CVS at the grocery store we saw the deli woman make sandwiches for a man. We decided to try that at the store in Rocca di Messo.

 Making our panni













Eating our panni

The guy cut and weighed the bread, sliced and weighed the salami, cut and weighed the cheese, wrapped each sandwich up, but them in a bag with the price tag. It was 8E for the four of us.

Jim remembered a little park and we stopped there for a picnic.

Our new town this year is Rovere. It is between Rocca di Messo and Ovindali. We walked around and saw some ruins and some cute stuff. It also seems to be an Albergo Difusso. There were several doors with this sign, which I plan to find out more about. Maybe it is a Musse difusso. That would be very cool.

Next was Ovindali and gelato. This gelato was rated poor. We walked around Ovindali and marveled at the Austrian vibe. The flowers on some of the buildings were outstanding. I also saw a Burton Snowboard bumper sticker and there is “The Hobbit” snowboard equipment store.

We went down toward the valley of Avazzano in a series of breathtaking tornade, hairpin turns. We stopped in Celano to visit the old, of course old, four sided castle. It is the only place we have been that is reliably open with secular and sacred  art work.

We own this!

 Artifacts from the catacombs at CVS

 Medieval statues.

They had a special installation of artifacts taken from each of the towns in the Subequo Valley, like CVS and CdI. Some things were from the CVS catacombs. There is a building for a museum in CVS, but our artifacts have been stolen by this regional museum. There were many things from Alba Fucca. I am waiting for someone who wants to go there with me. There is nothing left, but the ruins of a Roman village on the shores of the lake. The lake was drained a long time ago, of course a long time ago, because of mosquitos and malaria, but at one time Alba Fucca must have been a resort town. The artifacts from there were very rich.

We followed the road down to Avezzano, x-lake, and then back up the Sirentes, past the wind mills and back down to CdI and CVS. Another great day in paradise with great friends.