When I woke up this morning, I was determined to exercise
today. I started off the morning with a long walk past the lungomare (beach
clubs), and over to the farmer’s market. As I made my way back to the condo, I
remembered why I usually skip the beach on weekends, tourists. The Sunday crowd
was arriving in droves. So I came home, cooked some veggies for tomorrow, and
did some light reading (currently reading “The Men Who Would Be King: The story
of DreamWorks”).
For pranzo (lunch), Zia and I were invited to have lunch
with her lifelong friend Jeannette, who lives upstairs in our building. She
made a delicious Italian lunch, and we stayed and talked for hours.
After lunch, I helped Zia dust the top of her cabinets, then
decided to exercise more. On my walk tonight alone, I put in nearly 8,000 steps
for a total of 17,500 steps for the day (8.6 miles). The nice thing about a twilight walk
is that you see some of the truest lives of the locals. Passing through the
town, I noticed the old ladies sweeping their entries, the 8:30 ringing of the
church bells signaling the end of another mass, the kids still in their bathing
suits getting cranky and pulling on their parents’ arms, and the teens playing
beach volleyball at the edge of the Adriatic with a beautiful tramonte (sunset)
as their backdrop.
I wound my way through town and made it all the way to our
last beach club area before the sun finally hid for the night. I managed to
snap a photo of Termoli in the distance from that last point before grabbing a
couple of slices of pizza and heading home for the evening.
