Penne, Pescara, Penne

Monday, April 13, 2009. Last night’s rain has continued into the morning and the streets of Penne are gray and very quiet. Not a place in the Piazza is open as Stone and Jake walk through it on their way to try and find the place, rumored to exist, to buy bus tickets to Pescara and Rome. We have left Figlia sleeping, thinking she is probably weary from her unspoken responsibility of being “the wise one,” doing much of the translating, etc.

Just outside an old medieval portal that serves as Penne’s main entrance, Stone spots a likely suspect for bus tickets. We go inside, happy that they are open, but it is a small sports betting parlor, which helps explain why they are open when everything else is closed. Stone uses her improving Italian to inquire about bus tickets, and what do you know, they sell bus tickets also. We get two roundtrips to Pescara.

Because we have to get Figlia back to Pescara so she can go on a long-planned visit to Paris and London with a school friend, our logistics are a bit complicated. Our plan is to drop off the rental car today after we drop Figlia at her apartment, then take the city bus from the rental place to the Pescara bus station, catch a bus there back to Penne, then tomorrow take the bus back to Pescara with our luggage, then get the bus from Pescara to Rome. However, by the time we are on the road from Penne to Pescara we have realized that the car rental place is closed today, so we have changed plans and will just drop off Figlia today and drop off our rental car tomorrow, then hope we can get from Pescara to Rome before 4 pm for our hotel reservation.

We had hoped to have a little lunch with Figlia in her Pescara apartment but one of her roommates is entertaining her parents, so we decide to find a place to eat. Easier said then done on this Easter Monday, a major Italian holiday. Everything seems closed. Even the big Agip petrol station on the “street of several names” where they serve gas and lunch is shuttered. After more than a bit of driving around we spy a bar near the soccer stadium that seems open and might serve food. They are open indeed, glad to see us and have food galore. We get some rice balls, some good potato and meat pizza, and even better cheese and tomato, and green vegetable pizza, and two on-tap beers. Jake is much enthralled by the .2 liter Peroni beer glass and gets Figlia to ask if he can buy one as a souvenir. They give it to us for free. Knowing our cupboard back in Penne is quite bare, we get a chicken and some tortollini/carbonara to go.

The goodbye to Figlia at her apartment proves to be a tear fest, and outside in the car Stone pretty much breaks down completely for a good, full blooded cry. We realize that on the several previous goodbyes (to college and the like) Figlia was leaving us, here we are leaving her. Stone thinks it will be good for her to do the driving back to Penne. Back in our apartment for the final night, our chicken and rav/carbonara make an OK dinner.