The weather has been absolutely perfect for the three weeks we’ve been in Italy. But this upcoming week’s weather prediction is leaning towards a wet week, starting with some pretty decent thunderstorms on Monday. Because of this prediction, we decided to move our trip to Pisa from Monday to Tuesday and we ended up heading out around noon on Sunday to do some grocery shopping to hold us over for Monday. Seeing that we were out already, we decided to do a little Sunday drive in the mountains north of us – wow it was well worth the scary roads!!
We started out on our local highway – SS12 (which continues as far north as Verona!) and drove along the river valley up to an artist community called Vico Pancellorum. The route along the river was spectacular – tall, rocky mountains on both sides and the fairly deep river gorge on one side. As we climbed up into the mountain, the road narrowed to an even smaller width than our road up to Benabbio. It was very thrilling (code word for somewhat terrifying 😁)! The first indication that we had reached the artist community was this interesting fenced field with all kinds of sculptures made from metal and other materials. We stopped at the Pieve Romanica di St. Paolo – an old gothic looking church that had the most amazing view.
At the top of another uncomfortably narrow road, we reached the village of Vico Pancellorum. We wandered along the cobblestone streets (well let’s call them tiny laneways) and were treated to all kinds of artwork mounted on the walls of the buildings. It was a very cool little village way up in the mountains. Made me wonder how and why all these artists ended up there.
Our drive back down the mountain was quick with only one nail biting close call where a car coming up met us at a terribly narrow spot. Got to love roads with steep edges and no guardrails!! We arrived back at our place around 4 pm and enjoyed the late afternoon sun on the terrace.
Crimson Kathryn and her crew 