A day from central casting

Last night we had dinner in a wonderful little restaurant in the centre of town. Basically the restaurant is an adorable older couple’s dining room. The dinner was what they decided to serve – which in our case was a never-ending series of courses of local produce focused solidly on eggplant and zucchini. The later courses started defeating us but the food was excellent.

She did the cooking while he served and chatted with, neither of them spoke a word of English but they were utterly charming. We used Jodie’s Italian, my Spanish and Google Translate to have a long conversation lubricated by endless local wine and limoncello. The couple were just beyond adorable. The translations were punctuated with little fights between them or her ordering him to take his friend outside to smoke.

When they found out we hadn’t climbed the local tower because it was only open on the weekend, she told her husband to get on the phone. He called up the mayor who promised to open the tower at 9:30am for us. Then it was the church and a call to the local priest. Finally they arranged a museum visit. The night would have gone on past the midnight line we drew had it not been for the fact Jennifer had a 5am meeting and Chris had one at 7am.

So this morning we climbed the tower specially opened for us and took in the panoramic views. We then managed to track down the priest, who I was disappointed to find was of the young, cool sort rather than Don Camilo. He opened the church for us and drove off leaving us to it.

Finally this evening we visited the museum where thanks to Google Translate we were shown post-WW2 bicycles used by travelling crafts-people: Shoemakers, sculptors, entertainers, wine merchants, and more. It was fascinating and very unusual. It was also a fitting end to an amazingly entertaining 24-hours in a tiny Italian village.