Rainy day in Comacchio

It rained most of the night and we woke to more rain set in for the day. We had a morning of admin and reading and then walked into town for lunch.

Even the ducks in town were not happy!

We went to a highly rated very small restaurant with 5 tables for 2. Luckily it wasn’t busy.

The bread was interesting.

The menu was fully in Italian so Google Translate came to the rescue.

I had the 3rd one down which was squid ink pasta filled with sea bass and candied ginger in a creamy clam and turnip sauce. Glenn had the last one - the ravioli. Eel is the delicacy around here but we didn’t fancy it. We washed it down with a local white wine.

Both were absolutely delicious.

We then had dessert - I had a ricotta pudding with caramel topping and Glenn had lemon sorbet - again fantastic.

We rolled out of there to the museum to keep out of the rain.

There is so much history here as the area has been populated since the Bronze Age.

The Etruscan town of Spina was set up on wooden stilts and was the first major settlement in the area around 300BC to 4BC.

It was only discovered recently about 6km outside Comacchio. Only the bases of the houses survive.

The actual town was set up by the Romans 2,000 years ago.

The first things in the museum are the remains of a fully laden Roman boat found in the salt marsh in 1982. It was carrying everything that a Roman town would need including lots of wine in amphora, sandals - including the original thong/flip flop. clothes, kitchen and household equipment, lead ingots as raw materials, intricate lead religious items, jewellery etc etc

There were many Roman villas that made up the original town. They have found some - they are all under the existing houses.

We then went onto the Etruscan era and the findings from Spina.

There is still a debate on where the Etruscans came from but they were very skilled in pottery and metallurgy. The very detailed black decorated pottery was made there.

The last photo above shows pottery bullets for slingshots that might have been used by the Celts to attack the Etruscans perhaps leading to them moving.

We then left the museum and walked up the canal.

After all that history we walked back to the van - through more history.

First there was the 400 meter long arcade built in the 1600s leading up the church of Santa Maria in Aula Regia. It was built to make the church look more impressive.

Then there was the old eel processing factory just found the back. It’s now a museum but we didn’t have time to check it out.

We got back to the van just in time to miss some heavy rain.

We had a dinner of chicken cacciatore to warm us up as it’s still cold and rainy.