When we had lunch at the B&B in the Umbra Forest, we chatted with the restaurant owner, his wife, and their friend Gianni. We learned that there would be a festival over the weekend to celebrate the citrus harvest in Rodi Garganico. Rodi is a town on the coast that is known for its orange and lemon produce. In fact, Rodi used to export citrus to the USA if you can imagine that. We looked at a book that showed all of the labels from the export boxes over the years, and it was a graphic designer’s dream of labels. We also learned that each orange was wrapped in its own beautiful piece of paper before being packed into the shipping box.
oranges from Rodi
Anyway, knowing that there was a citrus festival, we hopped in the car on Saturday morning and drove to Rodi. It is another beautiful town where the houses drape down the side of the mountain and land at the sea.
view down onto Rodi at the sea
a cute street in Rodi
we saw many houses which were painted with special scenes
this house had a painting of a barn with the horse “tied” to the original horse ring
a church in Rodi
a cupola in the church
pipe organ in the church
and a very modern “Last Supper” painting in the church
and this little restaurant had tables made from street signs
The festival was strung along two plazas which were connected by a little alley. There were many booths with products for sale ranging from marmalade to liqueurs to artwork to jewelry.
festival decorations
festival decorations above a door
We bumped into our new friend Gianni and took a tour of the festival with him.
Chad and Gianni in a little shop
we bought some things from the little store – cime di rape (cream sauce from rapini greens), finochietto (fennel liqueur), sour orange marmalade, olive oil soaps, local olive oil in the can, and oranges and a lemon which were gifted to us
We had fried pizza dough for lunch. You could get it bianca (plain) or with tomato sauce and cheese. It was delicious! We also had a little beer and did some people-watching on the square.
fried pizza dough snack with a free glass of chilled red wine
beer on the square
a view of the square
All in all a good day!
in addition to artwork painted on houses, we saw lots of poetry on the walls…