Guardia Sanframondi

We spent the first 9 days of June in Guardia Sanframondi, which is close to Benevento and is N.E. of Naples. We stayed with an artist, Clare in her Air BnB.  We met over Facebook after watching a House Hunter's International episode that featured her house purchase in Guardia. We have been in touch for more than three years and decided that we should meet her in person on this trip.
Guardia is a hill town whose historical center was badly damaged in an earthquake in the 1980's, so many of the houses were abandoned, but Clare courageously purchased one and has been renovating it single-handedly ever since.

The approach to the town of Guardia. It is a wine region and so there are often tractors in the streets.

This is Clare, left, with Nicole who was volunteering to help Clare with some work in her house. This volunteerism is through a program called WorkAway.com, where the host provides room and board in return for volunteer help with projects.

The "streets" of Guardia are not suitable for cars in many areas, so we had to maneuver our luggage down the steep alleys as well as walk up and down them everyday!

This is the view from the balcony of Clare's house, it really is part of a collection of old houses all connected together in what must have been an evolving fashion.

This gives an idea of how the historic center looks from below.

There was a town market and it had to be perused.

Clare and Diane considering some kind of bargain.

Even more choices to be made.
Early in our visit, Clare had an invitation to a wedding reception from a family whose daughter was getting married. We were promptly included in the invitation. The reception was just fantastic, we did not understand many of the conversations that we were involved in, but we really felt included and part of the celebration.  It was a bit like being in a Fellini film with no subtitles.  It was also our wedding anniversary so everyone was congratulating us as well.

This is the father of the bride.

The mother of the bride, who was a bundle of fun.

There was a buffet table that always seemed to be overflowing with food and drink.

The bride getting all of the wedding photographs completed before the ceremony.

The marriage ceremony took place in City Hall, officiated by the Mayor. All of the guests congregated outside after the ceremony to throw confetti and rice.

This wonderful moment occurred when the bride hitched up her wedding dress and the groom whisked her away on his motorcycle.

This was the "Blues Brothers Bar" at the top of the parking lot where we walked every day. In the evening it is a happening place with many of the town's young folk hanging out. They were all very friendly, always greeting us with "Ciao" or "Buona Sera" as we passed by.
All of the folks we passed on the street exchanged this kind of greeting, which we found refreshing and delightful.

These "streets" are really steep and narrow!

Clare took us to one of here favorite spots in a wooded river canyon where we picnicked.

She also took us to a high point that overlooked the whole valley where Guardia is located.

We were up pretty high.

Clare is a wee Scottish lass and she was telling us just how far away her home was in Arran.

We also took a trip to another hill town, Torrecuso, which is across the valley from Guardia and located in a very precarious-looking location. Our journey there was a bit of a challenge when our GPS wanted us to go up a fairly steep street that became narrower than the car. Reversing out was a little white knuckled at times.

From Torrecuso we went to Benevento, which is the capital of the province we were in. It is an ancient Roman city with a number of significant structures remaining. It is also a city with wide piazza's and many fountains and flower gardens.

Some old bits remaining after the Romans went home.

Diane holding down the fort!

I noticed this poster mentioning an Aerospaace conference in Benevento the day we were there.

We then ran across an exhibit of an Italian Army drone. I just had to go and ask questions, as a result I had  a nice conversation with a soldier who described much about the system and the drone (or RPV) itself. Felt like I was back at work!

We found that most Italian drivers had a relaxed attitude toward driving. This attitude covered lane keeping, tail gating, choice of which side of the road to drive on, overtaking, signaling etc. The above photo shows someone overtaking a tractor with a load of hay on a bridge culminating in a blind turn. We chose to follow the tractor for a while.

We were fortunate to be invited to a Cantina lunch, through Clare again. The lunch was provided for a group of University of  Rhode Island students and their Professor. Many of the students were studying nutrition, permaculture, and social sciences and were in Italy to get a flavour of local village activities.   The lunch was in Cantine Foschini, a local wine maker, http://www.cantinefoschini.com/index2.htm

The cellar in their very old building.

The URI group, the host owners with their family, plus a few others.

The URI group also got to visit artist studio's in Guardia and here they are in Clare's studio, here is a link to her blog http://claregalloway.com/

We did so much and took over 800 photographs which has made it hard to choose what to include here. The people of Guardia left a strong impression on us, making us feel a part of their community.

Arrivederci Guardia, we will be back one day.

On to Italy

We left St Remy to drive into Italy, having been told about the craziness of that particular motorway as it enters Italy. The E80, along the south coast of France was very nice and smooth. We sailed along with Cannes, Nice and Monte Carlo viewed from above and then we hit the tunnels!

This is what it looked like from our view in the car. Our destination was Lucca, which is  just a little north of Florence. I swear we must have spent at least half of the journey underground. The challenge was going from bright sunlight into a tunnel. There were tunnel lights, but that moment of temporary blindness is disconcerting. At one tunnel exit, we found there was a lane restriction just as we emerged into the sunlight. We had to brake hard, try to move into the open lane with a large car transporter not paying any attention to our situation. Luckily we made it OK, no scrapes or bangs, just an adrenalin high.

Next we found ourselves traveling along with a whole string of Ferrari's, which was fun. I am not sure what the collective term for a bunch of Ferrari's is, but "flock" seems a bit tame, maybe it's a "frenzy" or a "fury", or maybe even a "flash". I think I like "A Frenzy of Ferrari's" best of all.

Our apartment was about half a mile outside the walls of the city of Lucca. It was situated in a large old building that seemed to have several multi-storied houses all connected together. We learned that our hostess's grandmother lived in the apartment below us, was aged 92 and still lived on her own. The house next door was occupied by a 94 year old woman who was born there, and has lived in that house all of her life. We don't get to witness that much anymore!

The view from our living room window was this large garden, and every day the owner, who looked to be in his eighties, was out there either weeding or harvesting. We noticed many such gardens in the neighborhood.

Lucca is a walled city where the walls are very wide and planted with trees. The walls can be walked or biked, with a circumference of over 4km. Unfortunately, we only had one day in Lucca and decided not to spend the time on the walls as it was quite hot, (now we do have to return).

This might give a bit of an idea of just how big these walls are.

It is an old city with wonderful narrow streets opening into piazza's. Not too many tourists during our brief visit, as I think it was fairly early in the season, though we did encounter a couple of tour groups.

This is the cathedral, Duomo di San Martino. Quite a magnificent structure and hard to photograph.

Puccini's home was Lucca, so there were a number of statues of him, as well as a tour of his house, if you were so inclined. We opted for ice cream.

This was an interesting and quite busy "square" in that it was contained in a large circle of buildings.

A great place to have lunch across the square from the Ducal Palace.

Not as grand as I thought it might be!

There are always groups of folks putting the world to rights.  Love it!

 This is the best sign I have seen in a long time, I think this concept should be adopted everywhere!
 Our stay in Lucca was very short, there is a lot more to see, as well as other nearby cities such as Pisa.  Definitely on our "return to" list.

Next stop, Guardia Sanfromondi.