Holiday

Many of you asked us about places to go on vacation, to spend some days before or after the wedding.
As you can imagine there are many place in Italy that are worth a visit: Rome, Sicily, Naples, Salento, Venice, Florence, etc. just to randomly name some of them.

To come to the wedding you will come to Abruzzo; this region is very interesting and still not too touristic. This means that you can have a real impression of what this land is about. The traditions are very strong and alive. Food is simply great. Mountains are beautiful and the coastline is marvelous and very various from place to place. There are many different small towns that are lovely and nice to visit. Handcraft tradition is vivid and still done in a old fashion way.

I'm sure some of you will anyway come back to Italy, then I think you can consider getting the chance to visit this region when you're there. Tuscany can maybe wait :-)

I'm planning to write a short list (not exhaustive but a starting point) of places in the region that are worth a visit. I'll do it within 2-3 weeks. As for now you can go and visit this website on Abruzzo. Is a young website, so you will find just a little taste of what the region can really offer. I suggest you go to look at the pictures...

Have fun!

Closest natural park (but there are many others)

I'm here... and I want to sleep!

Yes, it was quite easy to arrive to Lanciano. The town is nice and cosy, but... do you know where to go to sleep?

Well, a “bad” news first. Abruzzo (and Lanciano) doesn’t give easy access by internet. Many hotels, B&B, camping don’t have a website and often not even an e-mail. The existing web pages are often only in Italian or in a strange English.

The good news is that we have done some research. Of course doesn’t pretend to be exhaustive, but it is hopefully helpful.

Location

There are 2 main choices:
one is to stay in Lanciano (a very nice town, 10 km from the coastline, about 40 km from the mountain);
the other one is to stay by the sea.
In this second case, you have a quite large number of towns to chose from. But if you want stay close, the best is to find a place in this range: Ortona-Torino di Sangro (map, where you can also search on business).
When you look for a place remember that many towns in Abruzzo are divided in two parts: one on the hill and the other one by the coast (marina). For example San Vito Chietino and San Vito Marina are the same town, but the latter is by the sea.

Lanciano

Hotel Excelsior (centre) - 124€
Hotel Anxanum (centre) - 100€ (including breakfast)
Hotel Novecento (close to centre) - double 70-75€
Hotel De Paris (close to centre) - 65€ (60€ if more then 3 days)
Albergo Roma (centre) - double 60€
Albergo Allegria (old centre) - double 50-60€
Albergo Alba (centre) - double 45€ (including breakfast)
Casa San Francesco (old centre)

Other places

Hotel
Hotel Giardino (neighbour small town of Fossacesia)
Hotel Garden (San Vito Marina's coast)
Hotel Levante (Fossacesia Marina's coast)
Hotel Golfo di Venere (between Fossacesia and Fossacesia Marina)
Hotel Sangro (neighbour small town of Mozzagrogna)
Thema (between Lanciano and sea)
Hotel Villa Medici (between Lanciano and sea)
Hotel Valle di Venere (between Fossacesia and Fossacesia Marina)

B&B
Surprise! I discovered that there are many B&B around Lanciano (even with websites!). Many of them I never hared about, and I cannot guarantee the result. Most of them seems nice, old houses in the countryside, about 5-15Km from the sea. To find a solution in this category you can try to search on: http://www.bed-and-breakfast.it/

Agriturismo
These places are normally small farms giving the opportunity of eating, sometime sleeping or even working in the fields. Some of those places are very nice, and you can get very good natural food. For Abruzzo search for example on: http://www.agriturismo.abruzzo.it/Z_Sito_ING/Default_ING.htm
Some of them are located in small towns up to the mountain. It can be a good place where to stop if you want to visit some small towns during your staying.

Camping
Among the camping I tried to search those with bungalows. There are many choices, and some of them quite close to the sea (es. San Vito Marina, Casalbordino Marina, Torino di Sangro). You can search on: http://www.camping.it/english/abruzzo/chieti/ or http://www.campeggievillaggi.it/Abruzzo/campeggi-Chieti.html

When a hotel, camping, restaurant, etc. do not have a web site, you can maybe try to search on pagine gialle (same as gule sider) to get some extra information (in the section "brochure") and to see the location (mappa interattiva).

Hospitality
Finally you might have another chance: get to stay at some friends' house. Me and Birger will not be able to be fully responsible for arranging that. But please, use this blog to search (norwegians) and offer (italians) hospitality, if you like/can...



Lykke til!

Getting there

Air
The easiest and most obvious way to get to Lanciano is to land in Rome, and go by car or bus to Lanciano. There are several airlines going directly to the two airports in Rome. The main airport of Rome is Fiumicino. Most of the regular airlines are landing there, including SAS. Other airlines that sometimes have good offers to Roma, Fiumicino are Lufthansa and KLM.

Sterling and Norwegian are landing at Roma, Ciampino. These companies collaborates so you will most likely find the same flights on the two pages. We are usually very satisfied with Sterling. These are lowcost companies, but that doesn’t mean that they are always cheaper than the normal companies. Return tickets for anything less than 1500 NOK are good deals from Oslo. However, if the price is getting close to 2000 NOK, normal airlines might be a better solution. Lufthansa and SAS will often be able to offer you prices around 2000 NOK. A good advice is to search for tickets at http://www.kelkoo.no/

Other destinations than Rome are also possible. Ryanair has started direct flights from Sandefjord to both Milano (Bergamo) and Pisa. These airports are far away from Lanciano, so the transportation to get to Lanciano might surpass what you save on the flight tickets.

The closest airport to Lanciano is Pescara (30 km). Pescara is also a Ryanair destination, but there are no direct flights from Norway. Just from London Stansted and from Frankfurt Hahn. As it looks now, it is not possible to combine any flights from Norway with those flights without having to spend a night on the way down, but it seems possible through Frankfurt for the return.

Bus to Lanciano
The busses to Lanciano go from a bus station called Tiburtina. From Fiumicino you can take a train directly to this station. From Ciampino there are different options, the easiest way is maybe to take a direct bus to Termini Central Station (those connected to the air companies) and then take the tube to Tiburtina bus station. Otherwise you can take a regular bus to Anagnina, then take Metro A to Termini and change to Metro B toward Tiburtina. Outside you will find the busses to Lanciano. The company that goes directly to Lanciano is Di Fonzo, you should buy the ticket at the desk or on-line before you get on the bus.

Train to Lanciano
If you have a lot of time to spend, it is possible. www.trenitalia.it

Car from Norway
For anyone that is not from Northern Norway, it is a long way to drive. However, as I understand it there are some people from Telemark that are not scared of the distance either.

Some general information about the day of the wedding

The ceremony will take place in the Cathedral in Venusia's hometown Lanciano. The Cathedral is called Madonna del Ponte.
After the ceremony the reception will be in a restaurant/hotel called Valle di Venere, that is situated outside a neighbour town of Lanciano, called Fossacesia.
The reception meal is a lunch that will start from approximately 2 pm. Our early thoughts concerning the form of the reception is that it will be based on southern Italian traditions, but with adaptations to meet Norwegian traditions. In general that means that the meal will last slightly longer than in a typical Norwegian wedding, but you will not in the same way be forced to sit by your table throughout the meal. There will be music and possibilities for dancing etc. also while the meal is served. In Italy it is not common to have speeches in a wedding ceremony. But this is one of the points where some adaptations to the Norwegian traditions will be made. However, having many and long speeches will create some challenges both due to languages and traditions. The majority of the Italian guests have a limited knowledge of English. We are still in a thinking process concerning how we will deal with these cultural language challenges, and we are open for any suggestions…
How long the party will last depend on how much stamina the guests have.

What to wear
We have decided that all Norwegians should were Bunad…
Well…even though that would have been cool and probably very popular among the Italians, we have to consider what time of the year we are talking about. In Lanciano in August, temperatures from 30°C and up have to be expected.

As in Norway it is expected that you dress up in a wedding. However, the fact that it is a lunch reception in the summer makes you a little bit more free. There are no strict rules concerning dark suit our ties. The focus should be to dress comfortable in the heat. Bare in mind that the restaurant will be air-conditioned.

Transport on the wedding day
For the people that are staying in Italy for a while around the wedding we are recommending that you rent cars. (See later description) So for those it will of course be possible to drive to the ceremony. Saturday the 4th of August is a market day in Lanciano, so finding a parking could be quit challenging. We understand that many guests would prefer not having to drive into the centre of Lanciano with all the challenges that can create. We will therefore try to arrange with transportation going from Valle di Venere and possibly from other places to the church. Likewise we will have transportation arranged from the church to Valle di Venere. Since there are no taxis in Lanciano, we plan to hire some friends of Venusia as "taxi drivers". They should also be available for transport after the party is over.