Thursday October 6th
Roland who is from Switzerland but moved here with his wife about 8 years ago, took us with him as he made his rounds to feed the various animals. He said that they had buffalo, so I was expecting the American style, but they were more like water buffalo. They apparently are the type that mozzarella di buffala comes from. They have sheep as well, and he told me that in the first 2 years wolves killed 14 of them. I had no idea that there were even wolves still running free in Italy. So they bought a couple of a special Italian dog breed that has succeeded in keeping the wolves away.
They have a couple of pigs that are an ancient breed that is noted in paintings as far back as 1300. The male weighs somewhere between 500 and 600 pounds.
This house has been totally restored, and they did an excellent job. The rooms were very comfortable, and the pool looked very inviting. There is no TV in the room which is hard on us Americans, but adds to the point, which is to come up here and relax and get away from things.
The first town of the day was supposed to be the last town of yesterday, but that is getting to be normal. Macerata is another University town, so there were young people everywhere which gave the place a different feel. The big draw here is the Arena Sferisterio where they used to play an ancient form of handball, but where they now hold Opera performances. The big draw back is that it was all closed up so you couldn’t see anything inside. The Palazzo Diamante has an impressive facade. The Giardini Diaz took some searching, but unless you are about 3 years old they aren’t really worth the walk. The bell tower is supposed to have great views, and you can go to the top, but you must call for a reservation, which you don’t know until you are at the front door. I don’t want to say negative things about towns during this trip. And I hope to not have any more towns that make me feel this way. But I’m going to go ahead and say that you can leave Macerata off the list when you are planning trips. Unless of course you are here during the summer, and are an Opera fan.
Ascoli Piceno was the big town of the day, and one of the bigger towns of the Le Marche region. It was also one of the towns I’ve been looking forward to seeing the most. The Piazza del Popolo is often described as one of the nicest provincial squares in all of Italy. We haven’t been to enough Piazzas to make that decision, but it was definitely very nice. It was not café lined as is normal, there didn’t even seem to be that many stores, so it was a nice place just to hang out. It is headed off by the Church of San Francesco which has dozens of stained glass windows all depicting different scenes, even one with a Nazi soldier and his prisoners, strange to see in a church to say the least.
The Duomo has a little catacomb and the walls down there are almost completely covered in mosaics. One in particular was so good, and the facial shading was so precise that it could have easily been a painting.
We continued on and left the Le Marche region in search of a tiny little town called Fontecchio which has about 300 residents. The night’s lodging was in San Pio, a “frazione” of Fontecchio, with just 40 residents. We increased the population of this town like 8% when we walked in. It is called “Il Borgo” www.il-borgo.it and it is architecturally unique from all the other places we’ve stayed. There are 3 floors, 3 bedrooms, 2 ½ baths, 2 kitchenettes, 2 living rooms, and a nice little dining area. It’s sort of the equivalent of a town house in style, and the one 2 doors over is for sale, so I might have to check into that. In such a small place there aren’t obviously a ton of restaurants, but the one that was open was perfect. We dined with Paola, who owns the house, and Alessio, who you’ll learn more about tomorrow. They were great company, and this was another evening to add to our list of things that were made special just by the people we were with.
We had our fifth day of rain today, but I am willing to forget it all if we can get sun tomorrow. It might shape up to be the best day of the trip.