A walk to Faifoli

One day Danny and I set off on foot to see another 12th-century church just outside of town, Santa Maria di Faifoli (pronounced fa-EEF-oh-li). It's only four kilometers from the main square, so five miles round trip, which seemed easily doable.

Faifoli was a pre-Roman village and then a significamt Molisani town, but now there's not much there besides the church. Maria says the whole place was swallowed by an earthquake, but I haven't found any evidence of that via Google.

It was a beautiful walk on little country roads lined with sweet-smelling trees and wildflowers, where each turn revealed another gorgeous vista.

This is Montagano. It really is a city on a hill. Well, a village.

An olive orchard. There are olives, fruit trees, and gardens everywhere.

Little stone houses like this are all over the place. They are empty, often abandoned. And many of them, like this one, have a "Vendisi" (for sale) sign on the door. We hear you can get some of the smaller, more decrepit ones for a few thousand dollars, or just for back taxes. But they need a lot of work, including earthquake-proofing. I realize I have gotten too old for that particular fantasy.

As the walk wore on, we realized that we'd failed to reckon with the cumulative effects of the hilly terrain and the heat. It's been in the high 80s just about every day since we arrived, and the sun up here is intense.

We finally reached the church. It was locked up...maybe we'll get a chance to see the inside if we try again on Sunday. The building was restored in the 1990s so it doesn't look as venerable as it is.

The severity of the architecture suits the church's association with Pope Celestine, who became a monk here in 1232. He is famous for quitting the job of pope after less than six months so that he could return to a life of solitary prayer, fasting, and severe penance. His successor was afraid he might change his mind and locked him up in a dungeon, where Celestine, who was in his 80s, passed on to his reward a few months later. Perhaps he died feeling he'd gotten what he wanted.

This is a well across from the church entrance. It has a storybook quality that makes me think of magic frogs and dangerous wishes.

After all the steep ups and downs getting there, we dreaded the walk back, the beautiful scenery notwithstanding. We stopped at this shrine to rest and texted the kids, asking if someone would be willing to come pick us up.

Unfortunately for us, their phones were either not on or in another room. After waiting a bit, we decided to soldier on. Danny figured out a route that was quite a bit less up-and-down, and shadier.

We were very glad to see Montagano coming closer.

By the time the kids noticed our message, we were only 10 minutes from our front door.

We felt very pleased with ourselves--not only had we gotten plenty of exercise, but we'd managed to guilt-trip our children as a bonus.