Wow!  Another sunny morning for us.  

We headed up the moving walkway to get off at Piazza Campello just below La Rocca.  We walked around a bit looking for the walking loop around the fortress, made a wrong turn and walked a bit into the surrounding neighborhood.  At this point, I was mostly looking for a bar for coffee, but this was clearly a residential area.  So, back to Piazza Campello and there was the path right in front of us, and this cool fountain, “Big Mask Fountain.”

And after about 50 yards, coffee, with plenty of locals hanging out on the sunny benches. 

This “local” was really loving the sun:

We really loved the trail, but it was much smaller than I had imagined and it only took us about 30 minutes to completely go around.  It was really nice being among the trees and views and locals (mostly women) walking for the love of walking.

This incredible bridge, the Ponte delle Torri, crosses the now dry Tessino River and was made to connect two fortresses. 

 La Rocca d’Albornoziana, the fortress built in 1359, was, except for the light colored stone, very Game of Thrones looking.  Check out this courtyard; the little black dot near the doors is me.

From there we headed back down hill toward Piazza della Libertá,  The street leading to it was busy with more families out to enjoy the beautiful weather, some carrying the customary Sunday baked goods wrapped in white paper.

The ruins of a Roman theater are right there, so we looked for a while:

We checked out the Christmas market, but it was very small.  I did buy 2 hand-dyed chidren’s scarves for Mavis and Juna, le mie nipotine (grandaughters).

By this time, we were getting hungry so after checking out a few other places, we went back to 9Cento for a fabulous meal.  Ken had the same slow cooked pork as the other night and I had 2 appetizers.  One was a small eggplant parmigiana which was great, but the other was really fantastic:  tortino (flan) of pecorino topped with bacon on a bed of lentils.  It was so rich and cheesy and the lentils had so much flavor and then…well, perfectly cooked bacon.  Just a fabulous dish.  (Thanks Jim Z. for the rec.) I really like this restaurant. They play great jazz and I could watch the kitchen from my seat.

After lunch we walked just a little bit more.  The shops are all decorated for Christmas and I am trying not to stress about it.

We spent the remainder of the day resting our tired legs and feet.

I cooked us a nice, simple pasta dinner which is really Ken’s favorite.  And I’m here to please.

Homeland.  We just started season 3. i think we might need a break from its intensity.