Rome to Stroncone

Our plan Sunday was to pick up the rental car at noon. We checked out of our hotel and stowed our bags there. Then we walked to the park near the rental car place and people watched for a bit.

Renting the car was an adventure. We had a reservation guaranteed to cover the total rental cost. The lady in the single person Sixt rental car office told us that the cost was going to be over $500 more than the guaranteed price. We have rented a lot of cars in Europe and we have never had a problem like this.

After arguing for a bit we left and looked into renting someplace else. But, long story short, she eventually cancelled our non refundable reservation and booked us another car for basically the same price. I don’t know if she was trying to scam us or she was inexperienced and using their system wrong or what, but three hours later we finally had out car and were leaving Rome.

When we arrived in Stroncone, the medieval hill town where we are staying there were cars parked along the road everywhere as we drove through the people walking up to the town. When we got to the main square it was closed and we found out that the Chestnut Fastival was going on!

So we parked out of town, along the road, at the bottom of the hill. We left our suitcases and walked up to our hotel. It did help that once we got to town there was an elevator that took us up to the road near our hotel. It’s so much fun to happen upon local festivals.

We walked around enjoying all the activity. They were roasting chestnut in a barrel with a crank over a big fire.

We had some wine and chestnuts. A cone of hot roasted chestnuts and a glass of wine cost us €3.

About 7pm the square was open and we were able to walk to the car, move it to the town parking lot and get our suitcases.