Festa! - The Weekend - Part Two

Ok, so I know it's Wednesday which is mid-week and if I was still working in London I would already have planned the next weekend to get me through the week but, the weekend just gone was busy so here's the last instalment of the happenings!

Sunday morning I wake to a lovely cup of tea, and it was Tetley's, score!  Then we have breakfast on the terrace in the glorious sunshine.  This is the life!  Scrambled egg, fresh tomatoes, orange juice and toast, scrummy yummy.  Following this we decided that the next "plan" of the day would be to head into the town to watch the auction at noon so we headed back inside to do various jobs.

Barbara and I painted cherubs!  Yep, plaster of paris cherubs that she had bought whilst in Sicily as they are an ornament a plenty in that region.  Using acrylic paint in green and gold we got to work painting and it took some time.  In fact so long we had to continue after going to the town.  Meanwhile Peter had been continuing to make the IKEA chairs.

In the town the auction was being held to raise money for the church.  The festa was celebrating one of the Saints that the main church of the town focused on, in fact I think that it was actually celebrating the Saints dog that had saved the Saint from some sort of accident or something, not entirely sure.  Anyway there were these towers of goodies, literally towers (a shopping stand) of hams, cheeses, beer, Nutella, wine, so much stuff.  Then they were auctioned off and the locals all bid for the one they wanted etc.  The most for one was €700 so it's big business and a good money raiser.

During the auction, Barbara and Peter saw quite a few people that they knew.  English people, Italians, sons of friends, cousins of the builder, crazyness.  Lots of handshaking and greetings going on, I lost count of how many hands I shook!

Outside the church of Il Volto Santo

We left the auction to walk up to the big church of the town, where a "Holy Face" is on display.  The walk up to this church took a while.  Thankfully there were the stations of the cross on the road up to occupy us and keep us from thinking about the fact the hill was massive.  It was a really interesting place to visit and has been added to my, interesting places to visit with others list, so be warned of you come to visit!

Once we had descended back to the town centre we returned to the house to continue painting cherubs and making chairs and tables!  Peter managed to complete the table pretty much on his own, which was a big feat as the IKEA instructions clearly stated (in pictures) that two persons were needed.  And I must say that it would have taken me a long time to complete the table and I'm quite glad that my blister stopped me...seriously, on an aside, the blister, really annoying place to have a blister, it was really really itchy yesterday, I think that means it's healing but bleuck.


Right.  Enough about the delights of flat-pack furniture.  Back to the Festa.  We returned to the town centre at about 7pm for dinner.  Oh My.  Pizza.  Not just any pizza.  Four types of pizza on one humongous pizza base, genius!  So we all had one slice of four different types of pizza.  A sharing commodity I had not come across and one which I will definitely be doing again as sometimes one pizza, the same flavour, to yourself, gets a bit boring.  Hoorah for big pizza's (I should've taken a photo, it was massive!)

The lights in the town for the festa.

Then we watched the "procession" go past which consists of the congregation of the mass in two lines followed by the Father/Priest who is saying prayers into a microphone which is projected to the crowds by the loudhailer carried by a boy (a job for an acolyte I had not seen before!) who is followed by the statue of the Saint that I had seen earlier in the church.  It's a pretty big statue and took four men to carry it.  What amazed me is that this town is a typical hillside town so there are hills to go up and down and to walk it carrying a 5/6ft statue?!  No thank you!

A man NOT playing a trombone!

Right.  We're up to the last hurdle of the festa.  The band.  They were cool.  The typical brass/wind band that all countries seem to have but the trombone was very confusing because it wasn't a trombone.  By first glance it was but then on second glance I noticed that in fact it was button valved, and not a slider.  So that confused me.  I enjoyed listening, and watching the band, and there were lots of other people in the square doing the same thing.  At this point we had been joined by friends of Barbara and Peter, as well as their builder and his wife (he's in his seventies, incredible) and many other people came and went.  More handshakes later and I'm a little bit bewildered.  Not so much to welcome more pizza, an ice cream and a crepe on the way back to the house though!

And that is pretty much a very quick run through of the busiest weekend I've had here so far.  Crazy.