Okay so the inevitable has happened, my travel blog was largely abandoned for weeks on end. I will try to fill in some gaps here, based mostly on what I have pictures for. Overall my experience has improved immensly as the boys have actually started learning some important English, and I can understand a fair amount of Italian.
So I went on a day trip to Chieti, which is another one of the four larger cities is Abruzzo (Pescara-L’Aquila-Chieti-Teramo), and it’s about a half hour bus ride from Pescara. Unlike Pescara it is a historical medieval town that sits upon a hill top. Really, it’s everything Pescara isn’t. The same university that has it’s faculties of foreign languages, architecture, and social sciences in Pescara has it’s faculties of medicine and science in Chieti. I’ve actually recently met some med school students from South Korea doing internships at the med school there, sadly they’re leaving in 10 days.
I arrived in Chieti at about 2:00 pm, and my first thought was, “shit, it’s like 100 degrees out” as I was greeted with a dense heat that made the air feel claustrophobic. I shortly realized that it actually was 100 degrees out, and I also hadn’t eaten lunch, so my first instinct was to find somewhere to hide and eat for a little while. I started wandering around (by the way, this is what I always first do in cities, I’m not one for researching ahead of time and planning an itinerary). I then realized that a small town, middle of the day, extremely hot out, in Italy, has NOTHING open until about 4:30. I mean nothing. Ghost town. Tumble weeds. It was quite awkward when I did run into the 2 people I saw between the hours of 2 and 4:30, because I was clearly a tourist girl who didn’t know what I was doing. I contented myself with getting pictures of most of the major landmarks. Here is the main church (I couldn’t go inside until after 5:00)
The pope statue outside the church as actually quite a recent addition (in comparison to everything else, I forget what the actually date was).
I also found the last remains of a roman temple that had the most amazing brick work.
Wandering around I found many angles of what is supposedly a theatre but looks more just like another church to me.
Wandering around I found some cats, that I was legitimately concerned were dead, as it was so hot out. I did finally find a small cafe open in the viscinity of the cats on a random street. It actually wasn’t probably “open” as the probably weren’t expecting customers, it was just the owner’s family hanging out. But it was physically “open” so I went in and got some water and coffee. They were interested in trying to communicate with me, so it was a positive experience. Around the church area there were a lot of flowers spread out, which by my guess was an indication of a recent wedding.
I completed my wandering around by going to the area of what I believe was an architecture museum? It was the main museum in Chieti. I didn’t actually go in as it looked really small and I wanted to save the euros. The area was really pretty though with a park, fountain, and amazing view of the area. As Chieti’s a hill top town it has amazing views from a lot of different angles. Unfortunately as the day was so hot the haziness obscured what would be most of the mountains and things to see.
I decided to head back to the bus stop as I had plans to watch the Euro Cup final at a beach lido and didn’t want to be late (considering my history with buses). Everything was a little livelier now, people were coming out of hiding. It was good to see that people actually live there. All in all I’d say Chieti is beautiful but I don’t think I really experienced it. I’m going back on Saturday to have my birthday dinner there with a friend who lives in Chieti (she was already inviting people over for dinner, I just told her we were going to make it my birthday dinner).