to Chieti on the hill

to Chieti on the hill

[ Nov. 2017 ] On the second day of our visit to Abruzzo in the middle of Italy, we went to a town called Chieti which is about 13 km inland from Pescara.

Our visit to Abruzzo was not only for holiday but to meet our friends and to do some work, too and the birthplace of our friends was Chieti.

It is an old historic town whose old part is spread on a hill.

First we went to a bank to finish some work.

What interested me here was the relationship of people.

A family member of one of our friends first said about the female bank staff who helped us, “I have known her since she was born”.

Then when her boss came in, the boss said about our friend “I have known him since he was born”.

On top of that, while they were talking, they found out that the son of this boss and the other friend of ours were classmates in the kindergarten.

Chieti is a fairly large town with the population of over 50,000, but probably not many people go away or come in to the town and the society is built on the trust of the generations of the local families.

There must be some difficulties in this kind of society, too, if you live in there all your life, but as an outsider who has lived only in big cities where the human relationship is thin, I felt a bit of envy for them.

Appropriately, there was a picture of a family portrait hung in the bank and I thought it is very symbolic.

After the work, we walked around the town.

There were many slopes and the most streets were narrow with the lovely atmosphere.

Then it was the lunchtime.

Our friends took us to a restaurant in the ground of Chieti University which has as many as 30000 students in the newer part of the town called Scalo.

When they told us that they were taking to a restaurant in a university, I imagined a canteen, but in fact it was a nice proper restaurant.

The name was Lo Scoiattolo (meaning The Squirrel).

It started as a B&B for students, but about 10 years ago they improved the rooms and added the restaurant apparently.

We shared the mixed starters and mixed grilled meats.

The starter included some hams, cheese, Focaccia, Mozzarella, Polpette and so on.

They served the local olive oil which had the darker colour and stronger aroma.

The meats were very good, too.

We had said that the lunch should be light, but in the end I had the Tiramisu with Amaretto, too, which was excellent.

Our friends seemed like regulars here and the staff greeted them.

I could see that the staff wanted us to try more of their foods, which was nice, though we were too full for that.