Pretty as a picture

This morning we went into police headquarters in Campobasso, the provincial capital, and I applied for my Italian passport. I should receive it in a few weeks, the Italian postal system permitting. Then we came back to Montagano and I took a little walk around town. Even though it's been less than a year since our last visit, I was still taken by surprise by how strikingly pretty this little village is, how storybook perfect. I couldn't stop taking pictures, because admiring Montagano's beauty wasn't enough; I wanted to possess at least a few scraps of it.

We went to Maria and Claudio's for lunch. Maria had made wonderful baked ziti alla bolognese, followed by sausages with roasted potatoes, a heavenly dish of gratineed field greens, a delicious salad, and strawberries, plus some homemade white wine from a neighbor. Sorry, I didn't bestir myself to take pictures; we were too busy eating and talking.

Later Danny and I took another walk around town.  "How long before this place becomes a Healdsburg?" Danny said to me, referring to a California wine country town that a few decades ago was a cute rural backwater and now is a not so cute but very popular tourist mecca. 

Montagano will probably take a while to become a money-maker; it needs a few destination restaurants or some other reason to draw people in. (Right now the town's only eatery is Pizza Si, a little takeaway shop that serves good pizza and not much else.) But with its beautiful mountain views, venerable stone buildings and quaint, labyrinthine streets and staircases, Montagano would be an ideal backdrop for spa treatments, souvenir shops, and overpriced, not very interesting food.

A lot of houses didn't get indoor plumbing until the 1960s. Toilets were tacked on to the outside of the buildings