Advice on Abruzzo

That depends on your mode of transportation.
Are you a car renter or a public transportation
user?

We stayed in Sulmona and really enjoyed it. Had thought about the coast but if it’s cold it isn’t that enjoyable for us. Besides, Pescara is a city. Sulmona does a fun passagiata in the evening. People are out for the evening walk!
We went to these towns while there:
Anversa degli Abruzzi
Scanno
Pacentro
Caramanico Terme
Abbategio- very brief as we ran out of daylight
Santo Stefano di Sessanio
Took Transiberian historical train to Castel del Sangro
Trabocco meal at Punta Isolata-south of Pescara
Roccarosa-more to look at ski area Alto Sangro

We stayed in an airbnb in Sulmona for our 9 nights.

Abruzzo landscape, mountains and scenery are very impressive. I would highly recommend taking time to explore it. And yes, we had a car.

Yes, we will have a car.

Abruzzo is beautiful! Make sure to visit Rocca Calascio. I was there in October this year and it was warm and sunny.

Castelli is a lovely village with a great view of Monte Camicia behind it, though there's not much to do there in the actual town. I second the other poster who mentioned Santo Stefano Di Sessanio.

Hi Carol,
We spent some time in Abruzzo in October of this year. Our home base was a town called Chieti, about 1/2 hour in-land from Pescara.
I don't recommend it as a home base though. Being a hill-town it involved a lot of steep hairpin-driving each way as we left in the morning and returned each day. I assume you will have a car?
We visited Pescara, and I think it would be fine as a home base. Although it doesn't have an older historical area due to it being mostly rebuilt after the war, I found it to be a nice walkable town right on the Adriatic coast.

The other towns we visited were Ortona, Guardiagrele, Chieti of course and Pescara.

Look for posts on this site by Nelly - she lives there now.

Thanks everyone! Very helpful.

Carol,
Check the borghipiubelliditalia.it website. Abruzzo has many of the borghi throughout and colored some of our choices for travel there.
I haven’t seen posts from Nelly for awhile, but she is a wealth of info for the Abruzzo. The town she lives in is delightful.

Hi, Carol and others,

I haven’t dropped by the forum much recently, but I am always happy to see someone interested in visiting Abruzzo. My two cents is that I wouldn’t choose Pescara as a home base. It’s not a very attractive city and parking is always challenging. It’s where I go for errands, not for fun. There are some good restaurants and shopping but not enough to make up for the ugly concrete block post-war construction, the traffic and the fight for parking spaces.

You didn’t specify if you are wanting to spend more time by the sea vs mountains, but if you were looking at Pescara, I’ll guess sea. Vasto, Ortona, San Vito Chietino and my favourite Casalbordino are prettier seaside or near-sea towns. Lanciano is also very pretty, just slightly inland. These towns are mostly in Chieti province, which has a lovely sweeping bay with lots of “trabocchi” or old wooden fishing platforms, many of which are now fish restaurants and definitely worth checking out.

I’m a mountain person myself, and I love the hilltop villages inside the national parks (3 national, 1 regional park). The east side of the Apennines has Maiella National Park, which includes Caramanico Terme, Abbateggio, Roccamorice, Guardiagrele among others. The west side of the Apennines is drier and more rocky and includes fantastic places such as Roccacalascio, Santo Stefano di Sessanio, and Scanno, with its heart-shaped lake. The ski resort towns of Rivisondoli and Roccacaraso are beautiful too. Sulmona is a great home base for visiting all of those, plus a fantastic small city / large town for hanging out and eating well. Also the drive from Sulmona over Passo San Leonardo to Caramanico should not be missed (unless you get car sick easily)

Honestly, I think SJS did the ultimate Abruzzo tour this year. Sulmona was an inspired choice but I don’t know how they covered that long list of towns in only 9 days! The historical train ride she mentioned is lots of fun but takes a full 8 hours. I don’t think they did too much seaside time, so if that’s important, you’ll have to give up some mountain towns.

Once you have the broad outlines sorted, I’m happy to share some winery / restaurant / event tips. October is a fantastic month in my limited (4 Octobers so far) experience - sunny, warm not hot, harvests underway. Enjoy your planning!

P.S. I forgot Roccascalegna, another great ruined castle you can clamber all over, and a very pretty town. And Alba Fucens, a very well-preserved Roman amphitheater. The town of Chieti, with two good archaeological museums and the famous pre-Roman statue of the Warrior of Capestrano, found intact in a farmer’s field in the 1930s.

Your post was very interesting and informative.
We will be in Abruzzo Sept 24 - 30, 2023 for a one week tour. We have heard and read many wonderful reviews of Abruzzo. Our plan is to do our tour (Vasto) and then one more week on our own. We prefer not to rent a car. Our plan is to find a town after our tour and use public transportation and the train for day trips. Can you recommend a town that has these modes of travel and a budget friendly hotel?

Is there an airport in Abruzzo?

Greatly appreciated.

@dianneza5 - there is an "international" airport in Pescara. I think RyanAir and EasyJet are the only airlines that currently fly there, but it's pretty easy to get to various European locations from PSR. Rome Ciampino (other low-cost airlines) and Rome Fiumicino are easy to reach by comfortable coach buses (Prontobus, DiCarlo Bus and Flixbus) in under 3 hours.

If you will be by the sea for a week in Vasto, Sulmona is a good choice for a town to mix it up with some mountain time. It has a train station with good connections to Rome or back to Pescara. In general, though, Abruzzo sightseeing is challenging without a car. Most of the smaller towns are served by TUA, the Abruzzo-wide bus service, but only for work and school times, not with frequent buses. Trains are limited to the north-south fast trains along the Adriatic coast and slow regional trains that go east-west to and from Rome. Most of the rail network has been closed or only runs special tourist trains as referenced by SJS. The roads are good and not very crowded if you change your mind about a car.

As far as budget-friendly hotels, I don't know your price range but my favourite place in Sulmona is Grancia dei Celestini, a 13th-century ex-monastery right in the old town.

For more specific questions, it might be best to open your own thread, I'm happy to try to help but I don't want to derail Carol getting the responses she is looking for.

We would have walked by the Sulmona hotel Nelly mentions several times and had no idea it was there! Means to me a good place to stay as it’s presence is a quiet area although on the street of the passagiata-which is really not a raucous event by any means.