This isn’t the post I planned to write.
This post was born out of slowly greeting the day, reading The Irish Times, eating a fruit scone and drinking coffee in my local café.
The article I read in the paper that changed my plan described 100 Great Breaks Away divided in to ten themes.
It covered the following areas:
- City Breaks
- Solo Breaks
- Walking
- Golf
- No Limit Budget
- Culture
- Kids Holidays
- Festivals
- Foodie Getaways
- Retreats
That’s quite a range and although only ten suggestions appeared under each heading, quite a lot of ground was covered.
Italy appeared several times, Tuscany of course (Florence, San Gimignano, Cortona, Azzano), Liguria (Cinque Terre), Lazio (Casperia), Piedmont (Turin, Alba) and Lake Garda.
As I read the article I wondered if there’d be any mention of Abruzzo – there wasn’t. Once again this region I have grown to love has slipped under the radar of main stream travel writing. I wasn’t really surprised. In fact I was quietly pleased.
You see one of the things that initially attracted me to Abruzzo was the fact that once I mentioned the word Abruzzo to friends they would say “what, where, never heard of it”.
I have the usual dilemma of anyone who loves a place or region – I want to tell everybody about it, yet I don’t want it overrun. However since Abruzzo wasn’t mentioned once in the travel article I feel the need to redress the balance.
Let’s look at a few of the categories above and see if Abruzzo would fit the bill.
Solo breaks
Apart from just travelling and discovering new friends and new places on your own you could consider the relaxing activities offered by Italy Sweet Italy which include cooking, painting and pottery.
Are you a blogger? Would you like to contribute to good causes? Interested in Social Media? Then how about the Hands on L’Aquila a blogging conference that covers so much more that just writing and takes place in the stunningly beautiful town of Santo Stefano di Sessanio with Campo Imperatore as its backdrop.
Walking and Adventure
For the more active among you consider walking, cycling, canoeing and rock climbing with Kokopelli Camping. You can read all about their adventures on their blog Kokopelli Abruzzo.
Absolutely Abruzzo Tours will be happy to take you walking along the ancient shepherd tracks of the traditional transhumanza.
Festivals
Abruzzo has its fair share of music festivals that range from traditional music, jazz and marching bands.
But I’m talking about local festivals whose purpose is gather the communities together in preparation and celebration. Often these festivals are associated with saints or key historical events.
A favourite of mine is the festival of San Zopito in Loreto Aprutino. But you’d do well to consider the snake charmers of Cocullo, the festival of the dolls (Palio delle Pupe) at Cappelle sul Tavo and jousting in Sulmona.
Practically every town has at least one significant festival during the summer months, you just have pick and choose.
History and Culture
With striking hill-top castles, roman artefacts, impossibly beautiful churches with mosaics and frescoes, Abruzzo is a treat for the culture vulture. Bominaco, Rocca Calascio, Capestrano are only a few of the places where you get suddenly transported back to the past. The many hermitages cut into the mountains are simply awe inspiring.
If you travel to Sulmona there’s no avoiding Ovid – yes that Ovid!
This is a land that was traversed by the Romans, by the Longobards (Lombards), the Normans, the Franks, the Swabians, the Angevins, the Aragons and of course the Vestini.
These peoples and tribes have left their imprint on a land that is rich in history.
Inspiring Scenery
For this I’ll just let you observe…
More…
If I went into more details that I have above I’d be writing for a week. If you want to learn more about Abruzzo then of course I encourage you to continue reading this blog’s past posts, take a look at the photographs in my Photo Album and also look at other great sources of information available from other blogs and sites.
Most of the sites I like I’ve listed on my Really Good Sites page and those infrequent articles I’ve spotted about Abruzzo that appear in print I’ve listed on my Abruzzo in the News page.
There are plenty of official tourist sites also.
On a final note, today’s edition of the Irish Times did have one reference to Abruzzo. In an article entitled From God to Mammon it lists several Italian churches that have been deconsecrated and reinvented into banks, wine shops, motor repair garages and nightclubs. The Abruzzo reference is to the 17th century San Filippo Neri church in L’Aquila which became Theatre San Filippo but has been designated unsafe to use since the earthquake of 2009.
There are many people and structures still affected by the tragedy of the 2009 earthquake. That is why I believe activities like the Hands on L’Aquila a blogging conference, which aim to work closely with local communities, are so important.
