While not particularly verbose, this blog is chunky with photos – fair warning!

Well, they say all good Springs must come to an end (not apologising for that one), and so it was with this pre-Easter stay. This blog covers our last 2.5 days, during which we only did one new thing of note: visit a coastal town in which a local friend has a home away from home. However, on the first day – evening to be precise – something interesting happened. Read on!

Well it began one of those days I think I have described before as a ‘living’ day – a holiday, but spent as a day practicing living as an everyday citizen, rather than doing anything special. Could I tell you exactly what we did up to our dinner out? Well, I had gelato and Niamh made some cacio e pepe. So, there we go!

That evening we did go out to dinner, as we knew it was one of our last nights and we didn’t want to manually wash everything. Ok, so there was *some* recognition that we were on holiday. We went to the place beside us, Porgi l’Altra Pancia for a good dinner.

We left happy, as always. We decided to walk to burn off the calories. We walked towards the road above the Roman Theatre ruins, and it was then that we noted that there was an unusual quality to the atmosphere that night.

We saw the red light was in the direction of Piazza dei Priori, so we walked towards it, taking snaps along the way.

The cloud level had descended to just above the town itself, and so the fog bank was acting as a canvas to the medium of the city lights. I can’t say with 100% certainly that the lights were purposely switched to red because of the low cloud, but I would put good money on it that they were.

We wandered up to the square and it was magic. It was also spooky – like a movie set.

Very cool. We wondered what it was like from the main panoramic viewpoint and it got even spookier!

I’m surprised I got any sleep!

Anyway, the next day we vowed we’d get out of the apartment and try to do something new, weather permitting. But I had to take care of a couple of things beforehand. Firstly, there was the matter of my walk. I walked around the back of Piazza XX Settembre, which is something I don’t do often enough. At least some of the photos I take are from scenes rarely seen in this blog.

It was also a market day, and on top of that there was the Ladies’ Crafts market *AND* it was the spring edition of Volterragusto. More on these later and in the video faaaar below.

We left the town in the late morning and drove to San Vicenzo. We parked probably too far away from the town, and so I won’t link where we parked here – you should be able to do a better job yourself! When we got out of the car, we discovered we were on the wrong side of the tracks, so to speak. We took a little underpass to cross the tracks.

San Vincenzo is a lovely little town, with some pedestrian zones with shops, eateries and bars – and also a lovely marina promenade. Today was very quiet. Or would have been had it not been for the roaring wind. It was exceedingly blustery out – very handy if you want to cool down, but we were already in the off-season. At least it was a dry day, with a largely blue sky. I couldn’t ask for much more, given the time of year. We just took a little stroll (filmed rather than photographed – see video below), before we stopped to look for a place for lunch. Many of them were closed, but we did find a place whose food we really enjoyed: Osteria Christian’s. They had a lovely little… well, I can’t call it an amuse bouche, as it was quite large – but it was a shared place of couscous with cold veggies. It was really tasty and refreshing – I bet it would be a wonderful way to start a meal in the heat of summer.

Afterwards, we retook to the streets and had a blowy look at the strand. The wind was powerful. Clustered on the sand were little puffy balls of air, which may have once contained something, but were now empty. Maybe seed-pods of some kind – I’m not sure. You’ll see them on the video a bit below, about 5m 10s in. What are they?! I think they’re in the bottom right corner of the first pic here.

We went back up the town and then decided to take the marina promenade. It was really lovely around here, I have to say. The sky was clear blue, and because of the time of the year, there weren’t too many people around. 

Upon walking back inland to return to the car, we noticed that there were about 3 or 4 gelaterie were open, and I could have gotten my fix there today instead. Not many other shops were open, however – just a couple of restaurants, bars and those gelato stores!

When we got home, rather than returning immediately to the apartment, we had a walk about the indoor Volterragusto stalls. Lots on offer here…. truffle products, beer, salumi, cheeses, wines, pasta… I bought a couple of truffle-based condiments/spreads and we each got a beer; me a stout, and Niamh an IPA. They were nice enough.

We didn’t hang around, as we wanted to get a little rest in before heading out for a bit of food. Now, here’s a shame that’s on me: I am not 100% sure where the heck we went for food! The carbonara below very much reminds me of Torre del Porcellino‘s style, as do the tablecloths, but I didn’t think they’d have been open yet, and I could have sworn we finished off the year somehow without going into them. For no good reason – the food is nice there! Maybe I misremember, and it was indeed Torre. Now that I’ve re-looked at the video – I really *was* Torre! Lol! I think I owe Niamh some money!

Here’s a video of the day – enjoy!

Afterwards, we wrapped up the night – our final of this stay – with a stroll.

And to bed for the last time this holiday.

We did have half a day this time around, so we could walk, have lunch at Don Beta… grab a little you-know-what from L’Isola del Gusto – which was the very last thing we did that holiday.

You’ll see us again, when we came back in May/June!