After a couple of hours back at the villa, we headed out for dinner about 8 pm.  We set out for a particular restaurant in a neighboring town but decided after a brief stint of driving exploration, that we were too hungry to do much exploring right now.  We turned the car around and headed to another town, called Civitella.  We had visited there three years ago and found a wonderful/awful restaurant there where we had eaten twice before.  Wonderful/awful?????  Well, the food was amazing and totally wonderful, however the owner we found to be a bit Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.  He would absolutely ignore to the point of being rude to one of the four of us.  The first time we visited there he was completely rude to me.  The next time we visited there a few days later, he was chummy with me but was totally rude to Lynda.  Now that settled it with me and I swore that place off for the remainder of our stay three years ago.  Now, however, we were hungry and perhaps the owner had received the mental health help that he so desperately needed.  Arriving in this hill top village, we parked down below and walked up the stairs to the town.  We walked to the restaurant however it was boarded up and closed.  Apparently enough of the patrons found his good cop/bad cop antics unacceptable to the point he ultimately went out of business.  Well that’s one way to bring closure to a good/bad memory.

Anyway, we still needed to eat.  We struck out to find the original restaurant that we initially set out for tonight and lo and behold, we found it.  Parking in a small town is not particularly easy, however with three cheerleaders in the car with me encouraging all the way, I finally managed to bring the car to a stop in a parking place.  Actually not a parking place, which I didn’t know at the time because I was too busy striking the curb on the right side of the car before I smacked into a handicap sign at the head of the space.  Before I moved out of the “non” parking space, I looked off to the right and what did I see?  A sign that struck fear in my heart with visions of villagers and torches chasing us down with pitchforks.  It was a sign for San Pancrazio….and those awful memories from three years ago.  Let me just say that the CRAZY in San Pancrazio is well earned.  In case you missed that story from three years ago, I’ve put the link here.

https://camanoescape.com/2013/05/13/who-put-the-crazy-in-san-pancrazio/

Swallowing my fear, after finding no angry villagers, I backed our trusty Fiat SUV out of the non space and we were able to find parking in another location.  We then walked to the restaurant where we were the only patrons there.  While that is not usually a good sign, for this place it didn’t matter.   The meal was splendid and the chef who was also the host, waiter and dishwasher was a gentle and kind soul.  He spoke almost no English but he had his phone with a google translate app and he would communicate with us that way.  A very fun meal and an even better time meeting and talking with the chef.  We said good bye and promised we would be back in two days, on Thursday evening.  What a great day today was.  Heading home we arrived at our villa and headed to bed for some rest.