August 15 is the Assumption of the Virgin Mary and in Italy, they celebrate Ferragosto along with the feast day. It’s national holiday with Latin roots with “feraie” meaning “day of rest” and “augusti” nodding to Emperor Augustus who granted people a day off from working in the fields.

In Italy, everything shuts down on this date and so many people go to the beach. Paul and I were in Sicily for Ferragosto 26 years ago and the grid lock of cars trying to leave the beach at the end of the day left a lasting impression. 

Miss M thought about catching a train to Florence to see D who made a spur of the moment trip to Italy for the weekend, but advice from friends in Pico, who repeatedly warned of inconsistent train operations, resulted in her spending yet another day with her parents. 

Since we only have two full days left on our trip, we decided to brave the crowds and drive back to Sperlonga. Raggio di Sole beach club was sold out but we were able to get three chairs and an umbrella at Blue Marine, the beach club we spent two weeks at in 2022. The chairs are closer together and costs are higher, but it’s the same clear water and soft sand. 

For lunch, we ate at Pizzeria Blue Marine: Paul had fried baccala with broccoli rabe, Miss M had a margherita pizza and my pizza was chosen by the waiter since I couldn’t make a decision – there were so many great options to choose from! He selected the Nerano which was zucchini cream, sliced zucchini, fior di latte cheese, caciocavallo cheese, fonduta di parmigiano cheese, oil, basil, lemon juice and lemon zest. We could see the blue tiled pizza oven from our seaside seat and Paul watched our the pizzaoila grate the zest right before it came to our table. They were steaming hot. 

Our afternoon snack consisted of two crema cafes and one crema marscapone, two espressos and a peach EstaTe. We always miss the snacks and drinks when we’re back in the US and tried making crema cafe once unsucessfully. 

We left the beach shortly after 6pm and began the drive home. There is always so much to look at, unlike driving down 95 from Gloucester to Belmont. We passed an entire city block filled with thousands of tomato and pepper plants with a huge pile of discarded cherry tomatoes in one corner. Palm trees grow next to olive trees. We always think of our pets when driving past “Pet Heaven” crematorium, and today we saw another fire in the distance with a helicopter dumping water. There’s bales of hay, abandoned structures and two traffic lights separating Pico and the beach. Driving into the mountains is also refreshing after being at the beach, with the tree lined, roads offering shade from the late afternoon sun. On today’s drive we pulled over to get a picture of the Pico borgo from a distance. 

Every night there’s something happening in the town center. We realized at 11p last night that we never went to the Campari themed night at one of the cafe/bars in town. We missed the Campari themed giveaways but there were still 200+ people in the town center socializing. 

Tonight there was an even larger group on the square; about 300-400 people gathered in the center of town to hear a Vasco Rossi cover band. With more than 250 songs and 30 albums, he’s one of the most popular Italian singer songwriters, so people of all ages were singing along to the hits. It was a solid 2 hour performance by the cover band, plus encores.

At 9:30 we met up with some friends from Pico who we spent a lot of time with last year: Mimo and his wife Titziana, Marinella and her husband Luca, and Marinella’s 90 year old father Fernando. It was nice to catch up with them while listening to the music. We didn’t get home until 1am.