Whew! What a lot to catch up on, we've hopped two countries since last I posted!

Right now we're in Salzburg, Austria, at Yoho Hostel, but I'll get to that later.

Let us speak of our last days in Gaeta. June first, two days before we left, we went to the beach again. it was bright and sunny and absolutely wonderful, but since it had rained a lot the night beforehand, the waves were huge. Like over 7 feet crests, red flag conditions. We had a fantastic time body surfing, though it was cold in there. Unrelenting undertow made it a tiring experience, so after an hour or so we decided to lay out and dry off the sunny way (yes mom, I wore sun screen.) We went home for leftovers, but went out for pizza that night with Mariana, C's Grandfather's niece (I think she is C's grandfather's sister's daughter...what a mouthful!) at a place called Ciro's. A truly wonderful pizza place, we sat outside by the bay, just off the Yacht club, in a tent that kept the chilly bay breeze away. Air had a pizza with egg on it, which was delicious (I stole a bite) and C and T had Margharita pizzas; I had sliced salame on mine. The pizza was huge, and C, Air, and myself ate every bit of ours. C ate the last half of T's, because she eats very little at a time. I was full to bursting about 3/4s of the way, but upon the challenge of finisheing, I ate the rest. And then we had a sampling of cakes, Limoncello afterwards and a nice walk to round it out. The morning after I was still full, and feeling a bit sick for it, unfortunately.
We went to the fresh market, held every Wednesday in Gaeta, to buy travel food. Peaches, apricots, cherries, whole salamis (which are hanging from Air's pack), some cheese and two bags of rolls for sandwiches. We also got gifted the leftover meatballs for our sandwiches on the first train. We had 6 balls of buffalo mozzarella (in milk, which is heavy to carry!) and two bottles of homemade wine to take with us. We ate all the fresh stuff over the two days of travel (because we had nowhere to store it, wanted to not be carrying it anymore, and were hungry despite C not eating anything but the bread after Milan) but have only gone through most of one salami.
June 2nd is for the Italians what July 4th is for us Americans. So most every shop was closed, and there were hundreds of people just milling around town waiting for the grand procession. We didn't stay to watch the procession because we had dinner waiting for us, but the fireworks went off at midnight, so it might have taken longer than we thought anyways.
We had a fabulous time in Gaeta, and I would heartily recommend visiting, especially in the off season between May-June and Sept-Oct.