Benvenuti a Vasto!

So we set off this morning on the five(ish) hour bus ride from Perugia, and the first thing I saw when I took my first step onto the land of Vasto was... palm trees. Palm trees, just chillin' in the center of the piazza. (Apparently this isn't as crazy to everyone else, but it still baffles me. We don't have palm trees in New York.) Other than that first glance though, I was much too exhausted (and feeling a little bus sick) to do anything other than go inside and plop my suitcases down on the floor and my body down on the bed.

The bed and breakfast we're staying at is super nice. The main gate is directly across from Piazza Rossetti, the center of town, and it leads into a courtyard which leads to another locked door which leads to a staircase which leads to our rooms, which take up all of floors 1 and 2. I'm living on the first floor with Rachel; we have a double with our own bathroom, and the communal kitchen for the 12 of us is on our floor. Hannah and Luciana have the room directly next door to us, and we managed to move around all the furniture and figure out how to unlock the door that adjoins our rooms, so now it's kinda like I'm in a big suite with my 3 best friends here :) Yay!

I rested for a bit and then Hannah and I went for a little walk around Vasto. It was afternoon at the time so everything was closed up for pranzo, but we walked to where Vasto overlooks the beach and it was SO GORGEOUS that it prompted my last post declaring Vasto as heaven. I can't wait to go to the beach (I've never been to one that wasn't connected to the Atlantic Ocean!) now, although at present the weather is not exactly perfect for the beach. At 95+ degrees and at least 257% humidity right now (by my own estimations), it's more of a day to stay inside and relax under our air conditioning vent (we have AC here!!!!!!). :P

We also met Cinzia, the coordinator for this branch of the program, today upon our arrival, and in the evening she led us on a practical walking tour of Vasto, throwing in some fun historical facts. She has taught at Harvard in the past and her husband, now a professor at the University of Birmingham in England, got a PhD there as well. They live in England for much of the year now but Cinzia is native to Vasto and everyone here knows her and her family well, so seeing the reactions of those she encountered on the street really reinforced my view of the classic "small-town" feel of the city.

After the tour it was time for dinner at a restaurant that the landlord of the B&B, Nicola, has some kind of connection to. It's called Lo Scudo and is right down the block from the B&B... andddd its menu is predominantly (read: entirely) seafood. My favorite... :-/ It turns out a lot of others on this trip aren't huge seafood fans either, and many asked to have anything but all the fish dishes that kept being carried out from the kitchen. I, however, ate (read: tried) almost ALL the fish that was served to me. I had smoked salmon and fried calamari and shrimp (though not the one that still had its eyeballs intact...) and so forth, and it wasn't all bad! Still not my forte though, but I think I'll have to learn because they don't really eat meat here in the summer, and it's a coastal fishing town to begin with. We'll see how that goes!


Getting up early for another tour of Vasto, this one with Paola, so I'm off to sleep. Visions of the *octopus* on my plate earlier - fully intact with some limbs and creepy, non-blinking eyes - (couldn't bring myself to eat that one... I'm a work in progress at the whole fish thing) will probably be dancing in my head tonight! :P

PS- Hannah and I had our first Vasto gelato today, and were NOT impressed. We'll have to do some exploring and find our gelateria of choice soon.