Europe 2017 & 2019 & now 2023: When is a latte not a latte?

Left Ancona this morning to move further down the Adriatic coastline of Italy to Pescara.

After doing it many times we have it down to a fine art - breakfast, shower, pack, load car and on the road by 9-9.15. The stressful parts of the drive are leaving and entering the cities especially at that time in the morning to leave and around lunchtime when we arrive. I drive the ins and outs and Sherry does some of the motorway driving as she did this morning to allow me to follow the Warriors game against the Titans.

After around an hour of driving we pull into one of the auto stops which are about every 30 - 40 kilometres for morning tea as we did this morning.

Usually I have a cold drink and Sherry has “una tazza di acqua calda” (a cup of hot water) and as I “studied” Italian before we left the ordering is left to me. This morning I decided against the cold drink and thought I would have a cappuccino or something similar and looking at the drinks board I saw that they had a latte listed so that is what I ordered. The server asked me whether I wanted it “calda” and I thought that was a silly question as who usually has their latte cold so I responded “si”.

In short order Sherry’s hot water was in front of us and so was a cup of hot milk! For all my study of the language it had completely slipped my mind that the Italian for milk is latte.

Met our host at the apartment and took occupancy conversing with him and his wife in pidgin Italian English and also through Google Translate and they soon left us to enjoy our stay. Not long after they left we went to go down to Centro but for the life of us couldn’t open the front door of the building even though they had left us the keys - one for the apartment door and one for the main door. After numerous tries and lots of cussing we rang Placido (our host) who sent us a WhatsApp message back “turn the handle to the right and pull the door open, no key required” so that is what we did but to no avail. Messaged him back and while waiting for the response I tried again this time pulling somewhat harder on the door and to our embarrassment the door opened easily. Lesson to be learnt - don’t be so timid with other people’s property!

We were unsure how far away from Centro we are so took the car rather than walking (temp 34 degrees) and after going round in a few circles got it safely parked in a huge carpark adjacent to one of the main shopping streets. The retail area was starting to slowly awaken from the siesta as we had a walk around to familiarise ourselves and we were quite impressed with the general Centro area as it differs from most in that it is not in an old town as Pescara is right beside the coast and has numerous beaches right at the end of the street we were in - another Gold Coast type environment.

So plans have been made for the next couple of days - go to Centro in the morning to check out the shops and after lunch return and go to the beach for a swim and walk along the broad walk which extends some distance in both directions.