Last year, having just moved into our house, we thought we'd take advantage of some of the trips the base puts together. One of them was transportation to the Montella Chestnut (Castagna) Festival. We purchased our tickets and space on the bus, but then were unable to go. We were unable to go because the gate to our parco, which had never been closed, and we didn't have a clicker for, was closed. We did not know how to open it manually (we do now). And so we were locked in our parco and missed the trip to the Chestnut Festival. This time, driving ourselves and now possessing both a clicker and knowledge of how to manually open the gate, we escaped our parco and made our way out to Montella.
We found it! Actually, it wasn't that hard and luckily there was a big lot just down the road that we could park in for a small fee.
First chestnut sighting! And other nuts and beans and...
...candy!
We tried some chestnut beer.
I don't think the bar tender was thrilled about this photo.
Oh well. The beer was pretty good.
That's a whole cow.
Dan's a chestnut fairy!
The first of many, somewhat disturbing, anthropomorphized chestnuts.
Potato on a stick! Patate Twist for the win! These were really good.
They're like the California Raisin's scary Italian cousins.
Chestnuts roasting on an open fire....
It wasn't cold enough for Jack Frost though.
Her sign says "Welcome to Pearl's Petals."
And another one...
Sometime around here we tried to go visit the Chestnut museum, however, in Southern Italian tradition, it was randomly closed. I'm not sure if it is permanently closed or if we just chose the wrong time to visit. You'd think the museum would be open during the Chestnut Festival of all times, but noooooooo.
They had this cheese, caciocavallo (horse cheese, literally but not really). It's made from sheep or cows milk and is similar to a provolone cheese. Apparently the best way to serve it is to heat it over a fire, scrape off a serving, and slap it on some bread. It's pretty good.
Woo! Festival! Woo!
Anyone need a cow bell? They range from large to ridiculous.
The sky is not cloudy or smoggy, per say, but instead is full of fires from various stalls heating caciocavallo, meet, chestnuts, patate twists, and other delightful foods. The crowds had really picked up by the time we were ready to leave (good timing on our part). We enjoyed the festival and I'm glad we had the opportunity to attend this year.
Don't worry, we purchased a toddler sized bag of chestnuts to take home.
This concludes our Castagna adventures for today.
