Sulmona is a town whose economy is traditionally based on the manufacture of confetti.
Now its economy appears to be based on confetti and a small amount of tourism centered on confetti.
Ah, but confetti is not what you think it is - it is not tiny round circles of paper. Confetti (at least in the Sulmona context, I'm not sure how it relates to the paper) is sugar-coated almonds.
And of course, they've branched out. It's now sugar-coated almonds, chocolate-coated almonds, sugar-coated chocolate - and various other combinations of sugar-coating, chocolate, nuts and fruit.
It's also quite a pretty town in the middle of the mountains. I stopped there on my way from Napoli to Firenze. I was meant to catch a train from Napoli all the way to Sulmona, but this didn't end up happening - the train (an old, tiny little two-carriage affair) was clearly having trouble about an hour into the journey. The conductor came into our carriage to tell us what was going on. I didn't understand (apart from "Tren Fermata!" - "Train stop!" - but I'd already figured that out...), the conductor spoke no English, I've mentioned my oh-so-(not)-extensive Italian language skills before, and nobody else in the carriage seemed to speak English either. But a young family adopted me and I followed them off the train and onto a bus, asking the driver "Sulmona? Fermata Sulmona?"
I was somewhat amazed, still, to find that I actually got to Sulmona, albeit several hours later than I had originally intended.
That said, it was quite a spectacular drive through the mountains, possibly more so than if we'd stayed on the train.
I arrived quite late, checked into my hotel (!) (there were no hostels and I hadn't been able to find a couch to sleep on). It was only luxurious in comparison to where I'd been sleeping lately - but simply having a room and bathroom to myself was luxury enough.
The next morning I had a couple of hours to have breakfast and wander around. It was quite a pretty town.
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