Viterbo

Viterbo is pretty much everything we hoped it would be. We spent Thursday wandering around picking up things for our apartment, buying food and getting the lay of the land.We found a most excellent fruit and vegetable store down the street, a well placed cheese and cold cut spot a block in another direction with a meat store across from it. We still need to locate a local bakery but we have some leads on that. There is a fresh pasta store across the street from the fruit place so all of our basic needs are nicely met. We still need to find a large supermarket to get some basic things. It would be easier with a car, but we have yet to figure all that out. We do own one, we just don't know where it is!

We had dinner last night at il Monastero, a pizza place a few blocks away. It was crowded to overflowing by the locals which means it must be highly regarded since there were 25 pizza places within a few blocks and they weren't getting the same kind of traffic. The menu said (in Italian) that they were "two plate pizzas" but we didn't realize what that meant until each of our dinners arrived draped across two large plates. It was a good thing they were very thin crusts so that we were able to each finish without feeling too stuffed.

I intend to post more about the apartment, etc. and to include some pictures eventually, but we are still without internet in our apartment. We have the modem and all, we just can't seem to get something to click. Right now I am posting from the school. The next chance I will have to do that will be on Tuesday, so this may be the last you hear from me until then unless we can get the HDSL issues in our apartment resolved.