Pacentro to Fossacesia

Our last couple of days in Pacentro were wonderfully relaxing. It's been kind of nuts how much our first days in Italy have conformed to romantic ideas it's ease to cook up when you dream about visiting the country. It's hard to believe that Pacentro and Sulmona see relatively few travelers. Gotta hope it stays that way. Monday was pretty lazy - maybe it was the snow or the marathon meal the day before, but I think it was well spent doing little but sipping coffee, reading, and enjoying our first Italian pizza from one of the few local restaurants (which also seemed to be owned and staffed by the same people as Taverna dei Caldora - this is a seriosuly small town).

Note the lack of snow in the valley

Date on floor carvings in the town hall

We said our goodbyes to Pacentro yesterday (and are looking very much forward to coming back to check on the progress of Kevin's place) and headed down to Sulmona determined to find our first SIM card since India - we figure it'll be useful sorting out the farm logistics. We knew a lot of business around here take an extended break at lunch, but didn't quite anticipate that just about everything shuts down for about 4 hours after noon. A few paninis, some gelato, and some lounging in the sun in the main square got us through the few hours until one of the cell service providers finally opened back up. With that squared away, we headed to the train station, said our goodbyes to our gracious hosts, and caught the first train out towards the coast of Abruzzo to meet up with our first farm. 

Old town fountain - seen a lot of people stopping to lean over and drink from it.

Sulmona town square - big market on Wednesdays/Saturdays

 Our trains (and transfers) getting us to the small town near the farm we're working on were happily uneventful after our near catastrophe getting to Abruzzo (I've been strong-arming all the train doors until we're both safely on/off). We enjoyed a few glasses of prosecco in the train station in Pescara waiting for our transfer, and after a few minutes of wondering why it was taking a bit long, we were presented with our glasses complemented by a glorious plate of bite sized snacks. Italy, you're really doing it all right so far (I can almost forgive the aggressive train doors).

We made it out to the little town of Fossacesia quite easily and were soon picked up by one of our farm hosts, Carlo. We made the short drive to their small farm (horses, olive trees, gardens and carpentry) and settled in pretty quickly. Turns out we're here volunteering along with 5 other Americans to continue our recent trend of being around familiar accents. We enjoyed a family style pasta dinner and took a long late night walk with our fellow volunteers down to the beach. Hard to believe we were looking this was from the other side of the Adriatic just a few weeks ago in Croatia.

This morning started around the dining room table again with a light breakfast and working through a tentative work schedule for the day. Cindhu started out on chicken coop duty while I was sent to work with the horses. There are tons of little jobs to do and we're both happy to be at least briefly immersed somewhere this beautiful and working with our hands is a great change of pace. We should be here about five days and then will head up north towards Florence, possibly for a bit of time on a vineyard in Tuscany. Ridiculous.

New friend, Heidi