Abruzzo coastal visit to Crecchio & Costa dei Trabocchi

Today, the clouds came in and the morning view from our hotel is less glorious than yesterday.

The storm is coming from the Adriatic coast westward and we are heading to the coast eastward so we were hoping for sunshine when we visit Crecchio on our way [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crecchio and then onto Vaalevo on the Trabocchi coast. https://www.italia.it/it/abruzzo/cosa-fare/costa-dei-trabocchi. We were not disappointed as the sun returned to us for most of the day!

Our first stop was Crecchio where we met with Lucca, an Italian archeologist who took us on a tour of the local museum which is managed totally by volunteers. It was actually quite an impressive collection of mainly 6th century AD artifacts that were all found in Crecchio in an unearthed cistern.

We then returned to our bus and continued on to the Trabocco Coast on the Adriatic Sea. At its peak, there were almost 50 traboccos that were used for winter fishing. Today, there are only about 30 left and most of them have been converted into restaurants including the one we had lunch at; Punta Tufano, https://www.traboccopuntatufano.eu/ where we enjoyed a brief fishing demonstration of trabocca which is an ancient fishing machine typical of the Abruzzo coast built on poles driven into the sea and anchored to the shore by cables and wooden boards if weather permits! https://www.traboccopuntatufano.eu/. Both the setting and cuisine were quite remarkable and was enjoyed by everyone! Food photo was our our first course. The other two courses included fresh mussels followed by a seafood pasta that were so incredibly yummy that I forgot to take photos!

After lunch we began our ride back to Sulmona and stopped on the way at Santo Giovannii Venere Abbey which is set on top of a hill overlooking the sea.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Giovanni_in_Venere_Abbey. Apparently, about 7 monks still reside here and we met with one of them briefly.

It was about 5pm by the time we left the Abbey to return to Sulmona and had the rest of the evening to ourselves.