Us-In-Italy: Royalty

Today's adventures were all about royalty. We took a morning stroll in Piegaro and ran into Colleen's friend, the proprietress of the Hotel Ca' di' Principi, Anna Maria. She agreed to take us on a tour of the hotel, which was once the summer castle of one of the ruling Italian families hundreds of years ago. The rooms are beautifully furnished with period antiques and lighting fixtures. But most notable are the walls and ceilings, painted beatifully with appropriately Italian scenes in the trompe d'oeil style -- even many of the wall "paintings" and "woodwork". We show just a few below, but there are 28 rooms in the hotel, all painted with different scenes. Another impressive detail of this gorgeous space are the brick vaulted ceilings in the dining rooms, which don't photograph well because of the lighting, but are memorable nonetheless.

After returning to our favorite restaurant for another meal of tagliatelle w/ black truffles, we headed up the road to a small local castle, Greppalischieto. There is a small chapel and a few homes in the castle today and we walked through it, exploring the grounds, and pocketing a few cones and seeds from some interesting pines. Grandpa will have to work on germinating those for us!

We were introduced to great-grandmother Elida Mencarelli and she's as beautiful as the rest of the family. Colleen and I went to the market and picked up groceries for the next few days. It was similar to our grocery stores, except the produce and fresh food section took up half the space and only a few aisles were of prepackaged foods. Returning home, we couldn't let the sun set without a dip in the pool. We ended the day with polenta topped with marinara, fresh greens and a nice local wine. Simple and delicious.

We took it easy today since Lisa's still nursing her blister (the size of a half-dollar) from the other day, but hopefully by tomorrow, she'll be up for a full day of touring. Perhaps we need to work in some shoe shopping for her!

Ceiling in prince's bedroom at Ca' di' Principi

Ceiling in dining room at Ca' di' Principi

Ceiling in guest room at Ca' di' Principi

Another beautiful ceiling at Hotel Ca' di' Principi

Bust in niche at Hotel Ca' di' Principi

Chandelier in hotel room at Ca' di' Principi

Beautiful roses surrounding doorway in Piegaro

Glass factory chimney in Piegaro. This factory was in operation until 1959 and has recently been turned into a museum that we hope to tour one day soon.

Dan, standing near a tribute bench to those killed in WW2 at the castle Greppolischieto. Of the population of 30 people in this small community, 5 were killed.