Sulmona Italy Stories


Sulmona Italy
Travel Stories

Summer 2021 in Italy Travel Stories

With much of the world restricted and travel difficult it was not possible for us to head to our usual summer haunts in South East Asia.

With Thailand out of bounds we headed ‘next door’ to Italy for the summer.  Our journey took us through the Barolo to Tuscany and then onto to Sulmona in Abruzzo.

This blog post covers the Sulmona Travel Stories.

Italy Summer 2021 Placeholder
Italy Summer 2021

Sulmona Travel Stories | Italy

Our Sulmona Travel Stories…

We arrived in Sulmona late on a Saturday afternoon, the sky was dark and foreboding with servere storms having been forecast.

We found a carpark not far from our aprtment and checked in before the storm hit – just! The apartment was a delight, a spacious light filled space that was right in the middle of the old town and a stones throw from the main square Piazza Garabaldi. From the balcony we had views across the piazza to the nearby mountians.

Later that night we ventured out into the storm that was now raging around us and attempted to find some dinner. This seemingly simple task was far harder than anticipated as we ran from restaurant to restaurant in the driving rain to discover everywhere was fully booked. Eventually we found a bar where the staff put together a couple of basic pizzas served with a nice bottle of local red and we ate.

We had no real expectations of Sulmona so were pleasantly suprised on venturing out the next day to discover a beautiful ancient town full of incredible buildings, an abundance of cafes and restuarants and delighful friendly people.

We quickly settled into the rhythm of Sulmona, out and about early to beat the fierce summer heat and then hiding away until evening when it seemed the whole of Sulmona would take to the streets for their evening passagiata.

We explored the town and discoverd our favourite cafes, restaurants and produce stores. We shopped bi-weekly at the market and cooked many of our meals at home. Mornings would find us down at Cafe Venti Settembre and in the cooler evenings we would wander out for an evening aperitivo in a local bar. We ate in a few lovely restaurants, Don Cicco and Bella Mbriana to name two, but mostly we preferred to prepare our meals at home using the incredible fresh produce found at the many local stores. The tiny nearby deli was a treasure trove of the most delicious delicacies, also with minutes of our apartment was a butcher, a fish shop, home made pasta store, the fruit and veg man and a bread shop. And of course the market operates twice a week. Its a cooks dream

One day we headed off to the nearby and very pretty town of Pacentro and another day we headed into the mountains to the popular (and very busy) town of Pescocostanza. A ski resort in the winter and popular with hikers in the summer Pescocostanza has lovely old buildings, cobbled streets and a livley central piazza. It is also a full on tourist town with prices that reflect this. But mostly we were content to stay in Sulmona, the sit in the piazza with a coffee or drink and watch Italy go by.

And then just like that our month in Sulmons was over and we were packing our bags to head north back in to Tuscany.

Find out more about Sulmona here

Scenes from Sulmona