Sermoneta... part 2

Window to no where

Shape Shifter

Street... cars drive on this?

Steps from our apartment

Village from the road up

      We woke up Sunday morning to a much happier Oliver and a big continental breakfast buffet. Come to think of it that breakfast was the best of the trip as well so all in all Bologna ended up being a pretty good stopping point.
    But.... it was time for more car time fun! We loaded back up and headed to our home for the next week. We went around Rome and headed south about an hour to the hilltop town of Sermoneta. I don't know what I expected when I booked the place 2 weeks before. I had looked at sooooo many VRBO's and this one was one of the cheapest so I booked it. It felt like we had arrived in real Italy small back roads lead up to the mountain base and then there hanging off the mountains edge was our medieval village. We took a winding road with hairpin curves up the side to the towns edge. That unfortunately was all the information I had gotten from the owner about the location of our apartment .... it was in the town of Sermoneta. I know it's hard to believe that I with such intense dedication to detail (stop laughing) would have left out one glaring detail... The Address. 
    Michael may have been loosing his cool a little bit at this point, what with driving up a mountain in a foreign country, and of course my cell phone did not work so I generously offered to stop and ask for directions. At the base of the town on a one way street I hopped out and started up a steep street/sidewalk (that's how narrow the streets were) until I found a woman who .... spoke no English and then a man who.... spoke no English. About to panic a little myself at this point, a man came running up and said "I was sitting on my terrace and I saw you pull up with all the bambini, are you Ms. Hughes? I am Marco." WHAT miraculous do happen. Marco was the apartment owner. The apartment we had driven right by and was only a few yards away.
    He gave us the tour and we were starving so we asked for the best place to eat in town. He recommended his friends place The Ghost. Before we could put the bags away the kids were outside destroying 13th century castle walls. In order to preserve ancient history we took them exploring on a proper path. My pictures do not do the town justice it gets a 10 on the creepiness scale. It was so empty and quite you would think it was abandoned and that only vampires walked the streets at night ( that's what Michael told the kids anyway.) Mostly the only living beings we saw were an unusual amount of cats constantly crossing our path (shape shifters of course.)
    It was getting dark so we happened upon The Ghost (appropriate name) which came so highly recommended. We opened the door to find a white haired man that greatly resembled Albert Einstein standing in a tiny dinning room watching Italian Soaps on an old TV. I asked if they could take 5 and he walked 3 feet to the kitchen to ask his wife and she nodded so we were seated in what I am pretty sure was there house.  He only spoke to Michael and rattled off endless Italian NO English with such recognizable words as fettuccine, lasagna, and ravioli. Thank you! Thank you! that fettuccine is the same in every language!
      He served us out first course bread and fresh ricotta cheese with honey and nuts on top and from what I gathered traditional Sermoneta beans. Off to a good start both were delicious.... main course fettuccine for Oliver, ravioli for me, and lasagna for the rest.... it was not good none of it! I was at some ones house in a medieval village in Italy and wishing I was at Johnny Carinos so very sad. We forced the kids to eat as much as we could and then ended the meal with a plate of dry cookies that tasted like licorice yum yum.  The day ended with us walking home down the dark creepy cobblestone streets while the kids stayed unusual close, quite, and extremely watchful of passing "cats."

YUM

View from our house