Italy: Puglia & Abruzzo (mostly) — Oct/Nov 2025

Lecce in Puglia — 10 nights

Lecce, somewhat strangely called the “Florence of the South” when it is nothing like Florence except for being beautiful. I loved our apartment a little south of the cathedral, despite its many stairs, partly because all I needed to be happy was a couch, pillows to elevate my feet above my heart, good wifi so I could work remotely, and a floor-to-HIGH-ceiling glass door opening onto a balcony over a lively street and a big garden across the way. Walking around Lecce was mostly out of the question. But I’d spent five days in Lecce previously and it was more than enough just to be in Italy again. After a week, I managed to walk to Santa Croce to see its facade sculptures again. Lecce was pretty well crowded with tourists, including big tour groups, in October!

I did not eat out much in Lecce, due to my feet and my husband’s cooking course + Italian tutoring being 10:00am to 10:00pm all week. After his last class, we did enjoy sandwiches for lunch at Pizza & Co.. “Sandwiches” just does not capture how excellent Italian bready concoctions are.

After his classes were over, we had two whole free days, so we rented a car again and he drove us to Otranto to see its mosaic floor for a second time, hoping that more of it would be visible this time and it was. While we were inside, a pretty fancy wedding took place and none of the tourists were shooed away, so we all just watched it.

We also drove to Galatina so that I could see the facade and frescoes of the Basilica di Santa Caterina d'Alessandria. It houses Saint Catherine’s finger, said to have been bitten off her corpse by a local nobleman (!) and brought to Galatina from Mount Sinai. Santa Caterina.

I saw many narrative details in the frescoes that I don’t think I’d seen before, like four angels holding the mouths closed on four giant heads — turns out that is from Revelation and they are stopping the four winds. And deliberately humorous details, like in the marriage of the virgin where the losing suitors break their rods, one is breaking his stick over his own head and one is biting his stick in two.

On my want-to-see list that I had to skip:
Brindisi — the Tempio San Giovanni al Sepolcro facade & interior, the archeology museum, the cathedral, and the San Benedetto church & cloister.

Soleto — the church of Santo Stefano which is closed on weekends and afternoons.

However! Leaving Lecce and driving past Brindisi on our way up the coast to Montegrosso, we were able to stop at the church of Santa Maria del Casale which is surrounded by parking lots and what look like barracks (it’s just a short walk from Brindisi airport!). The church is open every day, and no one, not even a caretaker, was there at 9:00am, so I had the whole place to myself. Santa Maria del Casale.
Its late 13th/early 14th frescoes had just the kind of details I look for, like naked bodies emerging from the mouths of fish and animals. Apparently, at the last judgement, if you had been eaten by some beast, you had to be regurgitated so your body could be whole again.

Montegrosso in Puglia --- 1 night

In Montegrosso, we ate lunch at Antichi Sapori, almost exactly 22 years since we first had lunch there. Good food, lots of different antipasti, seemed like it had gotten a little fancier than it was before. Needs to be booked several weeks in advance.

Next day, our next stop was Agnone in Molise to tour its 1000-year-old bell foundry which still casts most of Italy’s church bells. The video is in Italian with English subtitles and our tour was in Italian, but there are English tours, too. There’s just a big hole in the floor of the factory where the bells are cast. The guide played tunes with a hammer on the big bells including Jingle Bells. Bell foundry.

Along the highway, there are roadside rest stops named Sarni (like Autogrill) — great for quick bathroom breaks and snacks and actually some pretty good local food, too. Every Sarni had bountiful Stitch (cartoon alien our granddaughter loves) merchandise for sale that would have had our granddaughter shrieking if she’d been on this trip. One Sarni had DECAF Pocket Coffee — I thought its whole point was caffeine while on the go. In another Sarni, I admired the efficient method their cleaner had of cleaning the women’s bathroom — he just sloshed his mop around on the floor and then up onto the toilet seats, and then back down to the floor, one stall after another, leaving everything very wet. Luckily, I go into bathrooms prepared for whatever I may encounter, including guys.

Speaking of bathrooms, I used the facilities in some pretty darn sketchy places (as usual), like a gas station’s office (not a public restroom) and tiny bars in the mountains, but was pleasantly surprised every time. No “hole-ly” toilets in the floor or dirty surfaces, almost always toilet paper and soap.

Sulmona in Abruzzo — 5 nights

Sulmona made a great base for us. It is known for its “confetti” — sugar-coated almonds made in many colors and fastened together to form a variety of flowers, insects, animals, and characters. Photo of confetti. Confetti.

We liked eating at Trattoria Don Ciccio and walking around this very attractive town.

We enjoyed driving through the Abruzzese mountains so much that we made two long driving loops from Sulmona just to see the autumn countryside. One loop took us 7 hours, Sulmona to Scanno to Barrea to Bisegna back to Sulmona. The other was to Rocca Pia to Pescoco and back. It’s hard to describe how gorgeous the mountains were, all covered in burgundy, rust, red, orange, and yellow. Beeches and oaks, for sure, but other colorful trees and shrubs we never identified. Imagine a view of closely packed fall trees in brilliant color seen from above, like from a hot air balloon, but then set almost vertically in front of you and high above you. With just our phones, and with very few places on the twisty roads to stop where there was a good view, we failed to take a really good photo, but we’ll never forget what we saw while driving. Ha! I just looked for some online photos for you that showed what we saw and didn’t see any that captured it!

On the way to one town that we were going to just drive past, we saw a barricade with a red circle sign on it but not blocking the road at all, just set casually at an angle over to one side. Not sure what we were thinking, or if we were thinking at all, but we kept driving along the road. At home, there are often “road closed” and “detour” signs on streets that are just waiting to be picked up later. But, encountering more and more people on foot, we stopped to ask some guys if we should keep going or turn around. They advised us to go ahead but slowly. But, the crowd of people got more dense. We asked some police officers and they said to turn around and detour around the town, so we did. I guess part of our problem was not believing that an entire town AND a public road could be closed to all traffic for a festival, but we should have known better after all our time in Italy.

We visited Bominaco in order to tour the "Sistine Chapel of Abruzzo," the Oratorio di San Pellegrino and the nearby Chiesa di Santa Maria Assunta. Nelly had said that three local women gave good tours of the two buildings, but instead that day we had a bored male tour guide droning mechanically in Italian instead. Well worth seeing, though, and there was quite a large group of tourists on this Friday in late October! Included in the frescoes covering the walls and ceiling was an interesting calendar of the months with the signs of the zodiac and what activities go on during each month. My observant husband noticed that on the February calendar, on the 14th day, was the name of Saint Valentine.

Good lunch just below at Ristorante Le Origini.

We had to skip what Nelly said was a short but spectacular hike through Orfento Gorge.

The next day, Saturday, we drove over the Passo San Leonardo to meet up with Nelly
in her beautiful town, Caramanico Terme. Very hilly streets, though, so I could hardly walk, but Nelly drove us around, zipping through narrow places and around tight corners. We then drove to San Tommaso to see the frescoes in the Chiesa di San Tommaso Becket, and had a terrific lunch at Agriturismo Tholos.

After lunch, my husband and I went to see the Romanesque church at the Abbazia di San Clemente a Casauria, mostly its sculptured facade. There were owl-bodied people just like those on the cloister columns at Monreale in Sicily — what do they mean?

Atri in Abruzzo — 3 nights

There was a surprising number of tourists in Atri and few parking spaces left, but we didn’t know why — it’s a very pretty town with great views and the frescoes in the cathedral but not a lot of tourist sites and, according to our host, only one good restaurant.

The big blank rectangular facade of the Duomo di Santa Maria Assunta is covered with square niches and we watched a large flock of rooks (also called a clamor of rooks and a parliament of rooks) fly in and out of these and all around. We visited the interior frescoes and sculptures twice — so many interesting details on the walls and ceiling and columns, such as what looked like a three-headed Jesus. We had lunch one day at the colorful and friendly Hostaria Zedi.

From Atri we did a day trip to Chieti to see the 6th century BCE statue called the Warrior of Capestrano — it’s almost 7’ tall and was found by a farmer plowing his field in 1934. Warrior of Capestrano. His narrow waist and extra-wide hips reminded me of some ancient Egyptian statues I’ve seen, but his big butt was something new.
We ran into another giant street festival/market and so had trouble parking near the archeology museum. We had lunch at Trattoria da Frank, not at all near the museum, but one of our sons is named Frank so we wanted to collect a souvenir for him, like maybe a placemat with his name on it. When we settled our bill and mentioned our Frank, the servers loaded us up with all sorts of “Frank” loot when we left and posed for photos in their Frank T-shirts!

Another day trip was to Pescara to walk on its cool harbor bridge and then to drive along the Trabocchi Coast to see the old wooden fishing platforms (trabocco singular). If we were more goal-oriented people, we would have found this whole expedition to be a dud since there was so much construction in town we couldn’t park near the bridge or even see it well. The coast and its trabocchi is mostly invisible from the coast road. People cycling on the paved bike trail between the road and the water could maybe have seen more.

Driving “home” to our B&B in Atri that day, along a narrow one-way street on the edge of town, we found ourselves behind a large truck slowly and carefully backing up for at least 500 meters, with help from passersby, until the driver finally found a place to turn around. Somehow, although we were just as stuck, it was fun and interesting to watch.

One thing on my list that I was pretty bummed to miss was in Loreto Aprutino. Online photos of the frescoes in the Chiesa di Santa Maria in Piano showed a brilliantly colored 15th century Last Judgement with scenes I have never seen or heard of before — the souls have to cross a bridge that narrows to a hair’s breadth in the middle so that those heavy with sin will fall off it. Nelly tried to find someone who could open the church for us, but nope.
Santa Maria in Piano.

Ascoli Piceno in Marche — 3 nights

Another market day when we arrived! After circling around the town and parking down the hill, we found our apartment right off the Piazza del Popolo. That lovely piazza was full of soldiers marching and military bands playing and flag tossing and speeches and ceremonies and parades in full dress uniforms with feathered hats and capes and crowds videoing everything. Not what we were expecting, but plenty interesting. My husband even went to an indoor concert by the army band.

Also interesting, and oddly beautiful, was the skyline of this town — a mixture of lovely old architecture and elegant cranes, there to repair the earthquake damage.

Chiesa di San Francesco has two of the silliest looking stone lions I have ever seen, laughing with a full set of human teeth rather than lion teeth — I always photograph painted and sculpted lions, the less like lions they look, the better.

The cool bridge we wanted to see was closed, but could be seen from another bridge.

Skipped: Chiesa dei Santi Vincenzo e Anastasio

We looked for and found some of the 100+ “pietre parlanti” (speaking stones). These are carved stone doorway signs with sayings in Italian, Latin, and vernacular. Speaking stones. More about speaking stones.

A few examples:

Semper festina lente = Always hurry slowly

Non senza fatiga = Not without effort

Difficile placere multis = It is difficult to please many

Chi altri tribula axe non da pace = Who makes others suffer gives himself no peace

My two favorites:

Mentem habeas vafri polpi = Have the mind of a cunning octopus

Chi po non vo, chi vo non po, chi sa non fa, chi fa non sa, et cosi il mondo mal va =

Who can, doesn't want to.

Who wants to, can't.

Who knows, doesn't do.

Who does, doesn't know.

And so the world goes badly.

Three places where we enjoyed eating in Ascoli Piceno:

Osteria Nonna Nina

C’era Una Volta

Il Vinatiere (our 50th anniversary lunch)

Ascoli Piceno’s special snack is olive all'ascolana — big olives stuffed with a meaty filling, then breaded and deep-fried. Not a fan of olives, but I tasted one and could see the appeal.

L’Aquila in Abruzzo — 4 nights

We walked down the hill from our apartment (or rather, ultimately down but also uphill several times since L’Aquila is quite hilly) to the National Museum of Abruzzo and to the nearby fountain with 99 spouts. Only a 25 minute walk, but quite a challenge for me. Still, I did manage to do it and was happy to find that I could. Enjoyed both very much!

Among other artworks in the museum were many painted wooden statues. I knew that ancient Greek and Roman sculptures were brightly painted instead of being the white marble we are used to seeing. But seeing, for example, a lifesize realistically painted Saint Sebastian (circa 1478) in his white underpants was definitely a startling and even uncomfortable experience. On the other hand, there was also a 12th century painted wooden madonna with an unusual, sweet, and somehow modern-looking teenage face.

Madonna.

Museo Nazionale d'Abruzzo.

99 Spouts.

One day, we drove to and around Campo Imperatore, a high plateau in the mountains, partly in order to find roadside stands selling arrosticini, skewers of grilled lamb or mutton pieces that Abruzzo is known for. Maybe it’s a seasonal thing to have these outdoor grills, but anyway we didn’t see any and we had arrosticini only in restaurants. We saw nobody for many miles along our route, but it was clear that this is a popular place in summer. Not everybody would enjoy this, but we liked a part of the drive when we were inside a low cloud and could not see anything of mountains or valleys, only the road right in front of the car.

Our first two choices of where to eat lunch turned out to be closed because it was time to harvest olives, but our 3rd choice (and the one recommended by Nelly) was open, a small excellent panini place in Calascio called Pane Amaro. This restaurant doubles as a vintage tool museum, and the owner/cook was fun for my husband to chat with.
Pane Amaro.

Three places where we enjoyed eating lunch in L’Aquila — I should say that even in meat-oriented Abruzzese restaurants, I found plenty of vegetarian foods, such as large balls of cime di rapa & cheese, breaded & fried crispy:

Taverna dei SaZi

Arrosticini Divini

La Corte Ristorante Braceria

Three churches I had to skip in L’Aquila — San Silvestro (frescoes), Santa Maria di Collemaggio (facade), and Santa Maria ad Cryptas in Fossa

As elsewhere, Google Maps was understandably confused by L’Aquila’s construction sites, pedestrian-only streets, one-way streets, tiny medieval streets, blocked streets, sidewalks that went under scaffolding, flights of stairs that were fine for people but not for cars. Staying on the edge of town instead of in the middle of town might have been a good idea.

Fiumicino — 1 night

Packing up to leave for the airport in Rome, I laid my walking boot next to the recycling bins hoping that someone would want it — I was walking semi-decently and we had to make more room for all the food we wanted to take home. Sulmona confetti, tiny Santo Stefano di Sessanio lentils, plenty of Pocket Coffee, and some fragile gourmet treats for the grandchildren such as potato chips flavored with ketchup called Wackos.

The drive to Rome’s airport was pretty scenic much of the way. We found, for the 3rd or 4th time (when will we learn?), that Google cannot find places like the Europcar office at FCO. Follow signs instead. The proud Roman citizen who picked us up from FCO after we returned the car and took us to our guesthouse in Fiumicino removed both hands completely from the steering wheel several times to gesture at length and count on his fingers, arguing vigorously that the worst restaurant in Rome was better than any restaurant in the whole world.

In the morning, we flew home despite our 1st flight being canceled at the last minute, the resulting extra-long layover in Boston, and the 2nd flight being hours late. But I only needed to get a wheelchair halfway through Boston airport, so that was progress. Great trip, good to be home.

Wow! I really admire your ability to take things as they come and enjoy the little things (like a truck backing up!). The truck episode reminded me of a favorite moment on a 2019 trip when we spent half an hour on a bridge, watching a couple from a narrowboat trying to get a lock to work and cheering when they finally did.

Good for you to go despite your injury, looks like you made the most of it, and I appreciate your details about this area of Italy.

The cooking class sounds amazing too!

Cheers and happy holidays to you.

I enjoyed your report and your tales of what you could and could not do.

I have twice traveled to Europe not sure how much I could do so I know about deciding that being in Europe and watching the world go by was better than staying home. I do admire how both you and your husband re-calibrated to have an enjoyable trip despite it being different than what you had planned. You will just have to go back to see those "missed" sites!

So happy you had a wonderful, and fascinating trip!

Do you want to share any of husby's comments about THE AWAITING TABLE?

As soon as I saw the name "Montegrosso," I knew where you were headed!!!! I agree that it's become a bit more fancy, but Chef Zito was still around, supervising, in 2023, the last time I was there. That area is so rich in restaurants, but there are so few nearby hotels that catch my eye for a stay of a few days, apart from Lama di Luna.
If you liked where you stayed, would you mind giving the name here??

Nancy, I've wanted to visit L'Aquila for ages; it was in pretty bad shape when we were in Abruzzo last, so we skipped it.
Oddly enough, just LAST NIGHT, I dreamed that I was there. I do need to come up with a plan to include that city...

I think you came up with a fantastic plan! I feel as if we missed so many places due to lack of time and ...Agnone, L'Aquila, Campo Imperatore, etc...and so many others!! Next time!!

Thanks so much for your report!!

NANCY, why have I not heard of this pocket coffee??!! From you or elsewhere?

Great, well written trip report. A++ for your adaptability and ability to take things in stride.

Have you seen Stanley's Tucci's episode for Abruzzo?

Thank you all for all your kind words!

Poggio della Guardia - Montegrosso Rooms https://www.booking.com/Share-JkSS2v

I’ll report more about The Awaiting Table.

Yes, I took things "in stride" if taking things "in stride" means walking like a penguin.

From my Sicily trip report: "My husband has been addicted for years to a product called Pocket Coffee and always stocks up when we are in Italy — he discovered on this trip that what he has been buying is the WINTER version and in April Sicily was busy switching over to the summer version. Apparently, the chocolate shell that holds the dose of espresso melts easily. The small summer version has a short tiny straw for sucking up the espresso, like a kid’s juice box, and makes you look kind of silly. So we looked everywhere for the winter ones and bought them up.”

Important to know about Pocket Coffee: if you bite into it, instead of putting the whole thing into your mouth, the espresso liquid inside will dribble all over you.

Yes, of course, all of the Tucci shows, many times each!

Nancy, what a wonderful trip report! As soon as I started reading your mishap, I felt so much sympathy for you - ready to leave for a trip, and a dog toy causes all of this! You will chuckle that I’ve actually been hiding a few of my dog’s toys the last few weeks - anything like a ball or rope toy that could cause a twisted ankle or trip. I leave in two days for a trip, Guess I am not as crazy as I might suspect. ; )

Your descriptions of the Abruzzo area made me so happy that you were able to go! I made it as far as Sulmona before immediately heading home for a family emergency. Some day I would love to go back there and see Nelly’s area as we had planned.

I love that you embraced the “enjoy what you’re seeing” philosophy vs. dwelling on the “could have been”.

Looking forward to hearing more about your husband’s cooking class. When I stayed in Lecce, I took Silvestro’s half-day cooking class. He gave us our choice of his olive oils in the metal containers as a gift, and I was sad that I couldn’t take one since I had several more cities and a flight back & forth to Palermo still ahead. My favorite of his three was one of the best I’ve enjoyed.

Thanks, Nancy, for the kind mention that I have inspired you. This year has been one to find that “new normal”, and I think he would be very pleased that I do try to find joy wherever possible. And future trips can be a part of it, too. I am back to Puglia again for a short time in May after a 1-week RS tour elsewhere. Italy keeps drawing me back - something about it, and the Puglia area even more so!