Highlights. Market, Pizza and Gelato.

The weather was much nicer than forecast and we woke to sun. At about 10am Katherine and I went with Jane to Jesi, an ancient Roman city placed on a hillock on the banks of the river Esino, while the men watched the All Blacks game. Jesi has a Saturday market in the main street and we all bought cheap items of clothing. It was not quite like the Nelson market because of the age of the surrounding buildings in this area.

We passed an excavation which was part of the original Roman settlement of the town. Later Jane showed us a metal plaque in the paving stones that mapped the Roman town. The various squares had churches and fountains of various ages, all very old.

Jesi is best known for an event: the birth of Frederick II Hohenstaufen, which took place on December 26, 1194 in the main square of the city. Although there is no written record of this, it is in the oral history. A few years ago, in fact, a bronze statue of the Emperor was erected near the city walls. The Emperor's birth in the city of the Marches is to be considered a fortuitous event. In fact, in the autumn of 1194, returning from Germany and bound for Palermo, Empress Constance had to interrupt her journey and stop at Jesi for the advanced state of her pregnancy. On Boxing Day, she gave birth to Federico, her only son born after nine years of marriage.

We found a cache at the statue, with Jane’s help to translate the hint as the coordinates were a bit off.

We stopped off for coffee and a wee treat each at a nice café then headed back to the car. We then drove back to Cupromontana, past the ‘sine’ sculpture. Jane took photos for me of the sculpture and the label. As a former maths teacher, I just had to have a photo of both.

For lunch we had the pizzas we had not been able to have on the previous evening. Ian had lit the fire while we were out and Jane made the dough on our return. The sun was out and it was warm and sunny when we started at about 2.30pm. The agreement was that we each ‘made’ a pizza and had half with the rest shared equally. We started with a white pizza which is a favourite of Ian. We were eating the third, while the fourth was in the oven and I was putting toppings on the last when the skies opened. We ended up having to move everything into our apartment – and Ian nobly cooked the last. All the pizzas were eaten and we were all restrained with our toppings in the true Italian style.

The rest of the afternoon was very tropical. We were hoping to go to a gelato festival, but we had a mixture of rain interrupted with fine warm periods. At 6pm Jane made a call to Tony and Lesley and their report of black skies all the way to Ancona had us deciding that we would just go to a local spot for a gelato each.

We got onto the main road and I fortunately asked where we were in relation to the festival as the sky was blue. We made a general agreement that we would give the festival a try as we had 1 umbrella and 1 coat in the car to ward off the bad weather. Jane and Ian had missed the previous year’s one and this will be their last while living in the area as well.

We enjoyed the drive to a different village, passing both sunflowers (only the odd one was out) and solar farms. Ian mentioned that the government had given a big subsidy to people to switch to solar power and it had nearly bankrupted them as so many had taken it up.

Ian parked just out of the village and we used the free bus to get to the outskirts. The festival organisers were selling 5 euro tickets that gave you gelato at 2 stands and a serve of local liqueur for the over 18s. I was trying to get 2 sets of tickets each for us but the message was lost in translation and we ended up with one each,

The gelato flavours were usually non-standard. There were 12 display and at each you could order a cup with one flavour or half each of 2 flavours. I lost track of what they all were but included carrot with ginger, buffalo milk, white chocolate with caramel, dark chocolate with rum, citrus fruits in various forms, fig and chocolate with pepper. None were awful but some were nicer than others.

It was lucky that my order did get confused. I bought three more sets of tickets, but we ended up struggling to use them. The rush to try the new person’s combinations became more restrained. It was lovely to walk around the village trying new things, but our eyes were possibly bigger than our stomachs.

Tony and Lesley had also come out. Tony kept saying he didn’t eat ice cream, but he did a good job helping us out with the final serves.

It was suggested we all stop for a drink, but when the spot we were heading to was closed it became more of an issue. The only spot we saw in the town had limited seating and we were a bit reluctant to try the rugby club both because it seemed the others had not been for a while (so was it open?) and because we needed to pack. Of course, the club was decidedly open when we drove past on our way back, but we did need to pack.

For a day when the weather was so erratic I was delighted to shop in the market, have home-made pizzas and then gelato. I was full, but delighted.