Cave Church

When we arrived in Monte Sant‘Angelo, we were surprised by the chilly weather: no sun, pretty strong cool wind. So we needed long pants and long sleeves for once.

The main attraction of the town in the church of San Michele – a church built around and on top of a cave in the middle of the city. From outside the church doesn‘t distinguish from other ones but you don‘t enter a hall but keep going down stairs to find yourself in a room with a combination of rough cave walls (alter) and smooth lime stones.

We bumped into a worship service and it was some experience to watch, even though we didn‘t understand a single word.

For breakfast, we stopped at a small local bakery. The owner was very friendly. She was just busy cleaning but still let us in. As many Italians in rather rural areas, she didn’t speak English. However, she surprised us with very good German. She had lived in Mainz. She told us she had 4 children and we should come back when we have a son, although our three daughters were already „bellissimo“ (very beautiful). She has run this bakery for 12 years.

We sampled through all her „dolce“ (sweet pastry): cookie or wonderfully crunchy flaky pastry filled with nuts, Nutella, figs, cherry or pistachio cream *yummy* That cheered everybody up because it had started to rain pretty hard and we were eating outside, at a wind-shielded table with benches under a tree. Soon the rain stopped and we could enjoy the magnificent view from our breakfast place.

We went back to the bakery and the woman was so nice to let us use her freshly cleaned toilet, brought us paper, let us use the sink in the baking room so we could see the raw dough. It was interesting to see behind the curtains and talk to locals.

It was pretty difficult to make our way back to the car. The city was much busier now. The side walks were not more than a curb and cars constantly drove by on the narrow streets.

We had already been wondering if Italians mostly use cashless payment methods since we hardly found any coins on our many walks through the streets. In Monte Sant‘Angelo however, we found 27 cents in total ;o)