Last weekend I went to Castel Di Sangro with Chacha and Tom. Castel Di Sangro is a town in the Apennine Mountains.
This was my second trip on the highways of Italy. Chacha and Tom were a little late leaving their house so I had time to kill, so I took the scenic route through the mountains. Here are some snapshots from the drive. I took a few of just the road itself to try to catch the vibe. On the highway there’s always a town somewhere in sight, usually perched atop a hill.
I should figure out how to embed maps into this blog. Stay tuned.
The highways are very well maintained. The roads are in great shape. The speed limits don’t appear to be working: Nobody follows them and they are unreasonably low. When driving the limit I always felt like I was going 30% slower than I would be driving the limit on an equivalent stretch of road in the US. Sometimes in the middle of the highway for no reason that I can tell, the limit will suddenly drop to 50kmh (31mph) for a mile or so. If there are any uncontrolled intersections the limit might be 30kmh (18mph!), on a 2-lane rural road that in the US would still be running at 55mph. On the other hand, it doesn’t matter that the limits are so low because nobody slows down. In fact, when I tried to respect the limits, I only became a danger to others driving so unreasonably slowly, everyone including the trucks flew by me with an occasional honk.
Over the weekend, my allergies flared up. It started Thursday night with a little irritation in my nose. By Friday night my sinuses hurt and my nose was stuffed up so badly that I couldn’t breathe through it at all. Between the allergies, and the church bells basically right outside the AirBNB window, I had a really rough night’s sleep. On Saturday, the first order of business was to get some Zyrtec at the farmacia. By Sunday morning, I was feeling better but still not great. As I write this, it’s Tuesday, I’m taking Zyrtec daily, and my nose is still stuffy. I do get hay fever in the Bay Area every spring. I guess there’s some kind of pollen in Italy in the summer that triggers my allergies too.
Now that I’ve covered the worst part of last weekend, next post will be the best part: Hiking around Lago di Barrea