Flashback: Day 2 Italy trip

On our second day in Italy we awoke to find a nice simple meal of bread, fig jam, cookies (known as biscuits to every English speaking country but America) and coffee. After eating our fill we headed into the town of Sora, about a 40 minute walk, to check out the local market held every Thursday and hike up to a church atop a hill we had spotted on our way in.

Wow, I have SO many pictures. it's terribly difficult to choose which ones to post.

Here's one of Boroni, one of the dogs that followed us all the way into town from the FarmStay and was our shadow all day. We attempted many times to send him home, but he just did not listen to foreigners. At one point we thought we had lost him in the crowd and were relieved that we no longer had to worry about his safety when crossing the street, but then we looked back and he looked so pitiful wandering around the street corner searching for us that we relented and called him to come with us. We have SUCKERS written all over our foreheads. the market wasn't exactly what we thought it would be. Instead of stands of fresh produce and local fare there was stall after stall after stall of shoes, purses, and tacky cheap clothing. did I mention shoes? Man, those Italians must love shoes. I can't figure out how a market that is held every Thursday can support so many shoe stalls! It was incredible. We did stumble upon one woman with a cart and a basket full of beans to sell. That was neat, but we had no need for beans...
So, eventually we decided to find some food and take a picnic lunch up to the church at the top of the hill, assuming we could find the way to the church. We got some roasted chicken with potatoes and cannelloni with foccacia mmm....just thinking about it again makes my mouth water. We stumbled about the town walking in the general direction of the church and find ourselves in some back alleys. It was dirty and smelled a bit like urine, but it was cool.
Every time we found some steps we went up. The church was up so it seemed to make sense, and thankful, it did. We came to a sign the confirmed we were on the right path and up more and more steps we went. Boroni following along as best he could.

We took pity on the poor pup and DH carried him part of the way up to the church (remember what I said about being suckers!?!) Once up to the top it was time to indulge ourselves and eat a bit of lunch, which we shared with the dog (suckers). The view from the top was amazing. We had heard that there was also some castle ruins up in the mountains here but after taking a survey of the area from on high we decided to take a pass on trying to find that. Besides, poor Boroni wouldn't have been able to make it! Nice out, huh?

Yep, so after that we walked back down into the town, grabbed a bottle of wine from the supermarket, I just couldn't stomache another meal with the homemade turpentine...er sorry I mean I just don't have a seasoned enough palate to appreciate such fine, homemade wine. We were exhausted from our trek and ready to sit back relax, enjoy a good homecooked Italian meal and make some new friends - which is exactly what we did.



Tune in tomorrow when we visit a shephard and learn how to make Percorino cheese!