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We live in the town of Citta' Sant'Angelo in the San Martino Bassa area.   Our apartment is about 10 minutes to the beach, 10 minutes up a hill to the old town.  The mountains are about 45 minutes away.  The city of Pescara, 20 minutes away, has a train and bus station and an airport.

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Writer's pictureMargaret

Neighbors are Family

Wednesday, 6 April 2022


We spent most of Sunday going through boxes, sorting, and finding places to keep them. I think we finally have a plan for how to arrange the furniture in the living room.

Maria invited me over for coffee in the afternoon. Mike went to Paul’s to ask him to join us for dinner. I knew that would take a while, so I went for coffee myself. I took paperwork from the car, as Maria said that we needed to have it inspected every two years. She graciously studied each document. We will have the car inspected next April and we will pay the road tax in December. Everything seems to be in order.


I had bought a small beef roast to test my oven. Paul arrived at 7:00 as planned, but dinner was late because I wasn’t sure about doneness. I will have to buy a meat thermometer. The roast was well done, not to our taste, but satisfactory. I had thrown in some veggies, wrapped it all in olive oil and seasonings and it turned out not too bad. I was nice to have Paul join us. He and Mike can talk about military stuff for hours. I look forward to meeting Paul’s wife Justina when she comes in May.


Monday is a blur, we are so busy that if I don’t write each day, I forget. But Tuesday was work in the yard day. Mike valiantly tackled breaking down the crate that held the firewood. Together we cleared away leaves and weeds. We found an iron gate that looks to us like it would be a good trellis, so we moved it next to the fig tree. We now have a more welcoming entryway to the house. Mike thinks the fig tree looks like a sexy woman. I told him that’s a figment of his imagination.


Tuesday evening Maria and Robert hosted Paul and us for dinner. It was a very, very nice time. Maria prepared a traditional Italian meal. There was antipasti, pasta with her special sauce, tender beef, and dolce. And of course the wine flowed. We are lucky to have such nice and supportive neighbors. Without them, we’d be struggling.


Maria and Paul had warned us that we might have to report to the Questura in Lanciano for the next step in getting residency. But, when we submitted our packet at the Post Italiane in Lanciano, the clerk pointed out that we were to go to Vasto. I even asked her to confirm that. Well, being skeptics, we side-tracked our tour of Vasto today to (1) locate the immigration office of the Questura and (2) confirm that we do indeed report there. Thank goodness for Google maps. There is a parking lot across the street from the building and pay-to-park is similar to Chicago. We found the office in spite of there being few signs. The officer I spoke to seemed at first annoyed because our appointment isn’t until 12 April. But I used my little Italian to ask him nicely if this was where we are to report. Once he understood that we were just checking that this is the right place, he smiled when I said “A presto!”


We had a nice walk around Vasto. I think Mike pretty much covered that part of our day.

On our way home, we decided to go into Casalanguida. I wanted to test the ATM to make sure my Wise card worked. It does!


So now we are home and it’s raining. We are drinking hot tea by the fire as our third week in our Italian home begins.





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