Fiuggi & Fumone

House in Fumone

View from Fumone

Parking in Italy - any which way!!

Ok, here we go again. We set off this morning to go to Rome. Now I’m sure Dorothy has good intentions but every time she gives us instructions to get anywhere we get lost and today was no exception! We had to take the train from Anagni for the 1 hour trip into Rome but if you can’t find the train station it becomes a little difficult. The road signs here are either non existent or very bad and most of the Italian’s here speak very little English. After asking many people without any success and because time was marching on we decided to scrap that idea and pick up a few necessities from the Supermercado and then have a look around Fiuggi and then onto visit Castello di Fumone. Now I know you think we should have seen enough of Fiuggi when we were lost the other night for 2 hours but surprisingly enough we weren’t looking at the sights when trying to find our way out! Anyway it is a lovely little town and we both had a delicious Carbonara for lunch. After that we decided to head off to Fumone which was only 12 km away and even though it didn’t open until 3.00pm we thought that we would leave early to allow us enough time in case we got lost again!! Wonders will never cease, we managed to get there unscathed.

What a decision it was to scrap Rome because we had the most magnificent day today. As soon as we arrived and were walking toward the entrance to the village of Fumone a woman walked passed and said Buonasera to which I repeated the same back. She then passed us and greeted a man to which I noticed she was speaking English. So excited we were to hear someone speaking English that I took the opportunity to ask her a question of which now I have no idea what it was. In any case she (Claudia) proceeded to explain about the castle which is a walled village which is one of many in Italy but this one has a particularly interesting history. She then, realising we still had time before the castle opened asked Sergio the bar owner if he was still open. He was closing up as they seem to do here in the middle of the day but said he would stay open for us. She told us where she lived and told us to pop in and left us with Sergio. He was the loveliest man who explained some more about the history of the town, made us a coffee and gave us a booklet on the area. He left the table and chairs out for us in case we wanted to stay a bit longer and shut up the bar and left.  We then proceeded to walk the around the village which was built around 200bc and was very picturesque. We then went back to Claudia’s who invited us into her home where we met her husband Austin, they are an English couple who divide their time between there and England. What a fantastic couple they were and they had what was apparently the best view in the village to which we can attest. Their balcony was where the guards used to stand to warn of approaching enemies. We spent an hour there and when we left she told us to come back after we’d finished the tour of the castle.

We then entered the castle and just in the nick of time as a tour was just beginning. The tours are only in Italian but that wasn’t a problem as we’d been given some of the history by Dorothy and Claudia. There were about ½ dozen other older people on the tour that were Italian but one of the men could speak a little English so he helped out when he could. They were all really funny and although the others didn’t speak English they were really lovely and trying their best to assist us. When we left there and went back to Claudia’s she made us a cup of tea and gave us some assistance on how to get around and some recommendations of places to see. We eventually left their place at about 6.00pm with renewed vigour. We arrived home and poured ourselves a drink to celebrate what a fantastic day it has been after such a dismal start.

We intended to try and give Rome another go tomorrow but on arriving home Dorothy left us a note to say that there was a strike on trains and buses so we are going to head to Pompeii instead. We have also finally had time tonight to set up the tomtom so hopefully our direction issues will cease!!!

Stay tuned….