We made sure we attended breakfast earlier rather than later to ensure that bread, cheese and meats were available to us. Whilst we were in the breakfast room, Mauro, who we met during the battle of Cassino discussion the previous night, made a point of shaking our hands and saying goodbye to us before he left.
After breakfast we drove to Gaeta encountering misty mountains and rain before arriving in Gaeta to glorious sunshine. We parked in the medieval part of the town walked up a hill to St Francis’ Church which spectacularly towers over the harbour. Unfortunately, we arrived to find the church wasn’t open.
We followed the uphill pathway and came across a ‘you are here’ signboard which gave us two options: walking up a twisting hill path to see a spectacular view or walk to the nearby Castello Angioino. We chose the Castello hoping to learn some history of the area.
As we arrived, we met an Italian who currently lives in America. It was interesting that he immediately thought we were British because usually, especially, in France we are often mistaken for locals. The American Italian found out that there was an English-speaking tour in half an hour. The tour was interesting: Today the Castello is home to a university but prior to that it was a prison used to incarcerate conscientious objectors. The conditions they were kept in were pretty grim. The prison also used to house two German SS officers convicted of war crimes. Those officers were provided a much better standard of accommodation than the conscientious objectors and allowed the conscientious objectors as servants.
After our tour we walked down the hill to the seafront for lunch. We chose a café that was serving Sfogliatelle Ricce, layered crunchy dough filled with orange and cinnamon flavoured ricotta cream. It was delicious.
We returned to Cassino and our hotel where we chilled out for a while before walking to the Lord Baden Powell Garden which we hadn’t quite managed to walk to the day before. We stopped for a refreshing drink of freshly squeezed orange before entering the garden turned out to be a green space and park so there was not much to see. We made a brief circuit of the green space before heading back to the hotel, stopping for a glass of wine along the way.
Back at the hotel, I freshened up before heading back into town to dine (for the second time) in Sir Jaspers. We found the food to be just as good as it was on our first visit.
We wandered back into town for one final nightcap. We were expecting to enjoy this in the Botanical cocktail bar which to our disappointment was closed for the evening. We chose the bar next door which didn’t stock dry ‘Blush’ Rose wines. The bar did however stock a dry rose non blush wine which I found a refreshing change. Sadly we couldn’t linger for me to sample a second glass we had an early morning start to get to the airport on time!
That bench would make a good shot for your “rest a while with me” section.
Yes
I can only imagine that’s Italian version of Sylvester & Tweety.
Ha Ha
There was another bench but I couldn’t photograph that because it was occupied.
Oh you mean another Sylvester & Tweety bench? Or of another random design book bench?
We used to have one art trail of this “book bench” theme in London before.
The other bench was next to and related to this bench. I couldn’t see all of the design, it was occupied with bags!