San Stefano - Uffizzi exhibition

Road trip today! We went off with Kristen and Rolf and Noel and Marzia. The first are the Danish friends that have the gallery and the other pair are an Irish/Italian couple who also live in Gagliano. We drove around the edge of our valley and into the valley that includes the Gran Sasso National park and Colleto Grande. We saw many beautiful hill towns on the way: Capistrano, famous for swallows, Calacio, with an amazing castle that looks as if it is growing out of the rocks, from which there is a view of the entire Gran Sasso and then San Stefano, our destination. San Stefano is supposed to be one of the most beautiful towns in Italy, but it was devastated by the earthquake some years back. There was a hugh medieval tower that had just been renovated before the earthquake knocked it down. In its place is the most amazing scaffolding ever.

Near Calacio is a separate micro climate. Although they are higher in the mountains than we are, they can grow grapes and olives. There are huge cactus and palm trees.
San Stefano is above tree line and looks completely different than our landscape. 


We were there to see an art exhibition of some paintings and Roman base reliefs from the Uffizzi Museum in Florence. The paintings were basic renaissance, with some by Dutch painters who had gone to Italy. None of their names except Claude Lorrain (French guy who painted in Italy) were familiar. My favorite thing in the show was a base relief about 10 inches tall and 24 inches long. It showed a lion knocking a man off his horse, an angel on the horse in front of him, a lion on the roof a cart pulled by oxen led by another angel on a horse. It was so mysterious. What was the story?

Mail box made out of roof tile.

Photographs in the exhibition were not allowed. The show was in three venues. The first was the elementary school and was not too exciting except for the amazing lighting. The next two were up in the old part of town. One was in the jail and another seemed to be a library. The roofs of these rooms were vaulted with large complex fireplaces and other antiques from the town. One room was devoted only to the arts of the area. I saw a basket that looks just like the one I bought. They had picked rooms with windows for light and security. The library had an amazing window. You could not see out of it. It was an arch shape above eye level, but the only opening must have been at the bottom. The light was reflected up through the opening and was pure gold.

Drinking coffee...you can always tell who the artist is because they will look right at you.

You can bet that coffee was part of this expedition. While we were drinking coffee, a group of Italian tourists came by wearing matching t-shirts. Turns out they were a choir so they sang to us all. It was beautiful. Magical things just seem to happen here. (except for our internet service, which we cannot make work)

Our Italian member of the group asked a Carabinieri guy (military police) where was a good place to eat. He told us to go to the campground restaurant. Would you ever eat at a campground restaurant in the U.S.? No, I think not. We had the usual antipasto, procuitto, cheeses, salami, bread with truffles, bread with sun dried tomatoes, strawberry jam for the cheese and a delicious scoop of ricotta cheese.  For primo, Jim and I each had a wide noodle with sun dried tomatoes, saffron and some cheese. Yummy. We were all smart enough not to order a secondo, meat dish, so we could have saffron gelato. A young couple was running the place with the woman as the chef. They were totally nice and she smiled all the time. It was a great meal. In Italy you must ask for your check, or in this case we asked to be told what was the bill, because they would never be so rude as to give you the check and imply you should leave. We were the only people there so they could not close until we left. The simply sat out of sight until we asked for the total.

Interesting chimney

Gran Sasso