Umbria Getaway to Passignano sul Trasimeno, Perugia, and Todi

Last Christmas Daniele’s brother gave him this little MoveBox, which is an Italian company that sells hotel packages. There are different ones, with different themes. Ours was places with “Charm”. The little box that the gift certificate came in included a book of countless places, mostly agriturismo (converted farms). Many of them had pools, so we had been waiting for a chance to use it in the summer.

We first thought we would stay in Tuscany, but since it is August, many places were full or had minimum stay policies. We ended up choosing a beautiful place, Agriturismo Podere Borgobello in Colle Umberto near Perugia, Umbria instead. I was excited to see Perugia. This was also near Lake Trasimeno, which Daniele wanted to see.

Our “weekends” work around Daniele’s work schedule, typically the day after his night-shift and his day-off the following day. When he came home, around 7:30am, we finished packing up and hit the road for Umbria.

The first stop was Lake Trasimeno. We visited the city, Passignano sul Trasimeno, which was a cute old town right on the lake that also went up into the surrounding hills. There were trails that went up into the hills, which we did a little of, but it was a hot August day, so I was not very interested in doing more of that. We did get some nice views of the lake below, though. The city also features a “Rocca” or castel-like fortess structure right at the center, which I always love.


Rocca of Passignano sul Trasimeno


Me in Passignano sul Trasimeno


Passignano sul Trasimeno port

The area around the lake was nicely set up for tourists or day-trippers. They had public bathrooms (not easy to find in Italy), a shaded picnic area (that we took advantage of with sandwiches we made that morning), and a spring water dispenser. Many Italian cities/towns have these water dispensers. Locals can typically get a key to get free still or naturally sparkling spring water; everyone else pays 5 cents a liter, which is almost free.

After lunch we went off to the little town of Colle Umberto to find this Podere Borgobello where we were staying and hopefully use their pool! And that’s just what we did the rest of the afternoon. We had passed signs on the way for a pizzeria, Il Cucuzzaro. Daniele hates going places he has not already eaten, but when we showed up here, they could hardly fit us in they were full with reservations. Now, we’re really in the middle of nowhere, so that’s really impressive. The food was great, and nice size portions, and cheap. I got the Ortalana Pizza, that’s with zucchini and peppers on it. It was really good, they roasted the veggies before putting them one the pizza, rather than just letting them cook on the pizza. And there were a mix of different peppers all were fresh and delicious. Daniele got some type of pasta with goose meat. It came with hand made pasta and was apparently very good.


Agriturismo Podere Borgobello in Colle Umberto (PG)

Saturday morning, after a delicious buffet breakfast, we went to Perugia. We were given some parking advice, to go to the lot at Piazza dei Partigiani, since it was still pretty early. From there we easily took the escalators to the top if the ancient town.

Like most Italian cities, Perugia is famous for a particular export, Perugina Chocolate – the company that make those little Baci among many other delicious things. I was hoping there would be a general Chocolate culture, like Modica, Sicily, but it seemed to really just be Perugina. They had a store right in the middle of the historical center where I bought a bar of Fondente Luisa. This is apparently the original dark chocolate recipe the founder started the company with. It’s pretty good!

The escalators of Perugia bring you right into the old ‘Rocca’ or fortress that once upon a time was all that Perugia was. It’s remarkably well preserved and pretty much open to be wondered around. From here you take a second, shorter escalator out to the “modern” historical center. We came up in Largo della Liberta where there happened to be an antiques market happening. There also is the Palazzo della Provincia, the equivalent of a County Capital Building right there and the main, store-lined, street that leads to the main square. The main square is dominated by two large buildings, one on each side. There is the Palazzo dei Priori and the Cathedral of Perugia.


Daniele in Rocca Paolina of Perugia


Me in antiques market in Perugia

As implied by all the escalators, Perugia’s historical center is high up. After we hit the big sites we wondered around a bit and found some beautiful views of the surrounding cities and countryside. There are also some park areas, some small side streets, and just generally lots of charm. I really liked Perugia!


Via Baglioni in Perugia


Panorama of Perugia from above

We started our day early to beat the heat and felt we had seen what we came to see by early afternoon. So we went to another city not to far and generally in the direction of driving back to Rome, Todi. Daniele wanted to go to Todi last weekend and Spoleto won out, which I think was a good call since Spoleto is a bit bigger with a bit more to see. Something I just learned, Todi is a city in Umbria, Toti is the very famous captain on the Roma soccer team, and Todis is a large supermarket brand. In case there is any confusion.

When we got to Todi we had no change for the parking machine, but by some miracle there was some the return change slot, so we used that to pay for two-hours of parking. In that time we climbed up to the top via the main street, stopping for random photos along the way, went around the very top a bit, and came back down. Then we stole some figs from a tree before Daniele pointed out to me they were actually privatly owned (it seemed like a public area). It was my first time eating a fig right off a tree and it was delicious! I saved a few that I made into pizza the next day. Maybe someday I’ll make a food blog. Overall Todi was charming. We were tired, so I don’t know if we missed things, but it felt like we saw it all in two-hours.


Via Giacomo Matteotti in Todi

Then it was back home to Rome. Such a lovely weekend!

Photos from this trip are online here:
https://picasaweb.google.com/111221349198606775660/20120824UmbriaGetaway

Umbria with Daniele’s Cousins

Daniele’s mother is from Umbria, the region east of Lazio (were Rome is). Her sister never left and still lives in the house where they grew up. She has three sons a bit older than Daniele and his brother that are each married. The oldest two each have a daughter about 15 and a son about 7 years old. I met this whole side of the family last year and adored them! Unfortunately they are about two hours away from us in Rome.

We’ve been trying for a while to organize a day with Daniele’s cousin Massimo, his wife Catia, and their children Sara and Diego. It is hard because everyone involved works shifts (Daniele is a nurse, Massimo a factory manager, and Catia a police officer) so it’s not like we can just pick a weekend, or even the first weekend Daniele has off. This day worked out because they were on vacation. In the summer most Italians take vacation. They were spending theirs between Catia’s family beach house, which coincidentally is right by Daniele’s parent’s beach house, and her family house were she grew up in Volperino. The latter is where we met up with them.


Cousins Daniele, Sara, and Diego

Their house in Volperino is a lovely large independent house on a large lot. Dare I say “villa”? The town is up in the mountains and a beautiful place to escape the heat of Rome. It is a such a nice place. Everyone in town knows each other. In fact the neighbors stopped by randomly throughout our two day stay there.

The town itself was damaged significantly by the 1997 earthquake. Italian houses are built differently than ours, from stone, and are expensive and time consuming to repair. It can take decades to build a house and obviously these people can not stay homeless that time. Most moved away, some have RVs on their property. 15 years later it is still a town under construction and the population is much lower, especially in the winter.


Only one wall is left from this house.

When we first got there, the kids were still sleeping because they had been out dancing till 2am the night before. Everyone in town goes to the bar (coffee shop) every night. We went later that night.

Catia made us lunch. After we lounged under almond trees to pass the afternoon heat. Daniele and I went to Nocera Umbra before dinner and when we came back his aunt and uncle were there, too. As well as some other people I was never introduced to (Italians do not automatically introduce everyone present). After dinner, we all walked to the town bar (coffee shop) where everyone in town was there hanging out all night long. The younger kids played hide and seek, the older ones foosball and ping pong, the elderly played cards, some adults played bocce ball, and everyone else just hung out.


Almond tree at Catia and Massimo’s house

Monday Daniele and I had the best of intentions to take a morning hike with Massimo, but just didn’t wake up early enough. So we took an easier walk with Sara and Diego that was more eating road-side blackberries than it was hiking. We hung out for the morning and early afternoon before setting off to Spoleto and home.


Sara knew all the best blackberries


Blackberry bush

Sunday we saw smoke in the distance that appeared to be a wild fire. It was just behind the rolling hills, so we could not see the flames to be sure. After a while there were helicopters and planes that dropped water, it was out the next morning. Catia said there have been a lot of them. Sure enough, Monday we saw another in the other direction. Daniele and I saw it closer up on the way home, but we also saw lots of other burnt patches of hillside. I hadn’t known wildfires were such a problem. Apparently it is always an issue in dry forest areas in Italy, especially this year with the droughts.


Wild fire near Trevi, Umbria

While we were out in Umbria, Daniele and I made some trips to see some new places. Sunday we went to the little town of Nocera Umbra. Fun thing about Nocera Umbra is it sounds a lot like “No c’era ombra” or more correctly “Non c’era ombra” which means “There was no shade”. The translation has nothing to do with the name of the town, but it did confuse the heck out of me when I was first hearing it.

The town was cute and small. They were also still reconstructing from the damage of the 1997 earthquake. Most of the places we saw in the area were, with large cranes propped up to the mountain top towns. They had a museum of torture, which I was interested in, but not enough to pay the 5 euro (or 10 for Daniele and I) entrance fee. As we were leaving we saw part of a Ballet Recital going on in the square by the door to the city. It was adorable!


View from the top of Nocera Umbra

Monday we stopped at Spoleto on our way back to Rome. Spoleto is a much bigger city and features a castle / former prison on top and a 13th century bridge. Speleto is a perfect example of the medium sized town that I love in Italy. Not the big city like Rome or Florence, which are already big and constantly getting bigger as more people flock there for work. Not the tiny hill town that is almost abandoned as the houses crumble and young people flee to where they can get jobs or worse towns only being supported by tourism. This is a city with a large working class who mostly live just outside the city walls and a small tourism business to boot. Catia works in Spoleto and gave us great advice, to park by the escalators, take them all the way up (like 5 escalators), then walk down the city. The city offered a lot to see.


Rocca di Spoleto


Ponte delle Torri. The Bridge of Spoleto. Built in 13th century.

Photo album from these two days is online here:
https://picasaweb.google.com/111221349198606775660/20120819UmbriaCousins

Family in Umbria

On Feburary 25 and 26, 2012, Daniele and I spent the weekend in Umbria. We spent most of the 25th in Assisi and that night and the following day visiting his mother’s family in the country near Sellano.

This write-up and photos are from almost a year ago, February 2012, but they never made it up. I’m trying to upload old pictures and the accompanying stories now with back dates so they are archived in order.

This past weekend Daniele went to the tiny town where his mother is from in Umbria. Umbria is in central Italy sandwiched between Lazio (Rome’s region on the West coast) and Marche (East coast) with Tuscany (and Florence) to the North. It is the only land-locked region in central Italy. These regions are like states and have their own local governments*. It was only 150 years ago that they were all individual kingdoms, except Lazio, Umbria, Marche, and Romagnia (now Emilia-Romagnia, the region West of Tuscany) were part of the State of the Church.

*Interesting, following the “example of the United States”, Italy has been decentralizing its power and giving more control to local governments.


Italy pre unification (150 years ago)


Italy today

I’m getting off topic. Umbria looks very much like the countryside of Lazio or Tuscany, but it’s just that much more rural. Daniele said the house where his mother grew up didn’t even have electricity when she was born. That is actually exactly where we were staying, with his mother’s sister. They live in the town of Sellano, which is already pretty small, but we were actually outside in the sub-area/zone of Calcinaro. Calcinaro has very few residents. The young people move to where there is more work so everyone who is left is old and even they are counting down.

As I mentioned, we stayed the night with Daniele’s Aunt Caterina and Uncle Giuseppe in his mother and aunt’s family home. I had never been in a house like this; even homes 40 minutes outside Rome are still condos/apartments. The largest I’ve been in before this was a barbeque in what I would describe as a multiple-family-home; over an hour from Rome, they had a garden and two stories but still shared walls with their neighbors. This was an independent house, with two floors, and not only were there chicken coops outside, but old turkey ones, all sorts of stuff.

Caterina cooked us a delicious dinner on Saturday and lunch on Sunday. I won’t list all of the courses, there were many, but I’ll give some highlights. She has this big wooden board that goes over a similar sized table in her kitchen. She uses this surface for rolling out pizza and pasta dough (she made stringozzi, a handmade spagetti-like pasta particular to this region for us). To roll out the dough she uses the rolling pin of HER grandmother (without being rude to Rina, I can’t imagine how old Daniele’s mother’s and her older sister’s grandmother’s rolling pin is). The rolling pin was completely unique. If you know much about wood rolling pins, the french style is tapered at the ends and the Italian “pasta style” is a consistent diameter dowel. This monster looked more fit to be a table leg than a rolling pin; it was not tapered, a dowel about as wide as my forearm and long as my leg.

I didn’t partake in this part, but they roasted the meat in the fireplace, which I hear makes it taste extra good (the fact that the meat was probably running around their yard that morning probably helps, too). Their fireplace is neat, it has iron pipes coming down passing through the flames that is used as a secondary hot water heater.

Normally they would slaughter one of their chickens for company, but since I don’t eat meat and Daniele doesn’t really like chicken, some little bird got to live another day. I got to enjoy their eggs though for one of the courses at Sunday lunch, and they were delicious! We had a frittata which is an Italian omelet that is eaten for lunch or dinner and not breakfast. The reason Caterina made this was because it is the traditional way to prepare truffles. Earlier we had a discussion about truffles. Apparently they grow in this area and Giuseppe goes out collecting them every so often. He uses a dog, which does the job better than a pig. Apparently they only used pigs in like the middle ages before dogs were so easily available. I was really blown away to hear him talk about the differences between winter and summer truffles (winter are better, but also harder to find). There is a annual truffle festival not too far from here being held in another week. Their knowledge of a food that I have only ever had sparingly grated over a pasta, or infused in an oil that was then drizzled over my plate blew my mind a bit. Update 4/2013, I now eat a sinful amount of truffles.

Daniele and I explored the area a little bit Saturday morning. We walked to Vio, up on the hill top, which is another zone/area of Sellano. There we saw the oldest church in Sellano and a few more people moving about. Apparently a few German families have bought up houses in the area for summer homes. On our way walking up we passed people Daniele knew. They are the last family in the area to herd sheep, and that’s what they were doing, though it seemed they had almost as many dogs as sheep. We talked to Luigi, his mother, and saw his brother. Luigi was very friendly. His mother, I feel bad, but I really thought she was a man until Daniele told me otherwise that night. He pointed out she was wearing a dress, I pointed out she had a beard and old people dress weird! And when I say she had a beard, I mean you could have braided those white hairs. Daniele’s aunt and uncle have an accent, but I can mostly understand them, this women I couldn’t understand a word– but neither could Daniele!


We also walked to Ottaggi a different hill. From there we could see Sellano, the actual ‘city’ along with temporary housing that was built for people after the earthquake in 1997 but is still in use.

Sunday after lunch we paid a visit to the next door neighbor, a woman named Maria. The area is rural, but the houses are built in clumps, Maria’s door is 20 feet from Caterina’s. When we were going, I asked if I needed a coat, and they laughed at me. There is probably not another house for a mile, but Rina and Maria could have a conversation from open windows in their respective houses if they wanted. Shortly after we arrived her daughter, Elide joined. She is the companion (word Italians use for adult long-term relationship, particularly when you live together) of Luigi, who we met earlier herding sheep. Another woman, Giulianna joined as well. Giulianna works at a cheese factory and gifted us a full wheel of fresh ricotta made that day. I think Daniele’s parents told his aunt I like it. They were all actually really fun. Giulianna particularly talked about seeing the United States the way many Americans talk about going to Italy (or insert favorite European country here). At one point they were joking about their accents and I wasn’t sure if I could laugh. They definitely had accents, but so does Daniele. Theirs was weird. It was clearly county: like Appalachian meets Italian. There was definitely that “small town” everyone knows everyone feel. While, I understand and admire why Daniele’s mother left this town for Rome I really liked it here. I hope economic pressure doesn’t wipe out the whole town.

Caterina and Giuseppe have three sons: Massimo, Mauro, and Giulianno. Giulianno had to work, but I had met him and his wife another time. Massimo, his wife Catia, their children Sara and Diego, Mauro, his wife Stefania, and their children Martina and Marco all came over for the afternoon. The family is lucky in that the cousins, the two older girls and the two younger boys, are about the same ages. This is the most of Daniele’s family I had ever met. This pretty much was his family, it’s just far away. I loved all of them! Especially Catia and the girls: Sara and Martina.

The complete album from this weekend including Assisi:
https://plus.google.com/photos/111221349198606775660/albums/5862010840111467969

Assisi Pilgrimage

On Feburary 25, 2012, Daniele and I spent the day in Assisi as part of a weekend visiting his family in Umbria.

This write-up and photos are from over a year ago, February 2012, but they never made it up. I’m trying to upload old pictures and the accompanying stories now with back dates so they are archived in order.

Basilica of St Francis

Daniele and I took a trip to Umbria this weekend. I had never been to Assisi, though it had been on my “Italy list” for a while. Nor had I met his mother’s family who are from Umbria, but I’ll save that story for next time.

Assisi is a beautiful town and it is obvious why it brings in the tourists and pilgrims. Many smaller towns in Italy are dieing as the younger generation moves to the bigger cities for work, but Assisi seems to be doing well and does not have that ghost town feel some hill towns can have.

There are many, many churches in Assisi. I’m not sure if you can stand anywhere in Assisi without having a church in eyesight, maybe two. There are also people who are serious pilgrims, barefooted, robed, looking to tap into the holiness of the place.

We were their bright and early, so we started with the number one tourist spot, Basilica of St Francis and the Sacro Convento. It had only just opened, so there was no crowd, contrary to when we were leaving a bit later it was already getting filled. This church, like others I’ve seen though never this large and decorative, is two churches built on top of each other. The older church is below, partially underground, and the newer church is above it with lots of light. Both churches are very ornate and stunning.

Upper church

Lower church

The Basilica of St Francis also contained the Sacro Convento. The convent was not much to see, but I did stop in their store to get some souvenirs.

Sacro Convento

It was a bit of a disconnect, knowing this church had been destroyed and standing inside when and it seemed perfect. The restoration work was amazing! Particularly in this cathedral. Some of the other, lesser churches had plain white walls as they must have not received as much restoration love. If you don’t remember the damage Assisi underwent in 2009, this 2-minute video includes most of the startling footage from when that was news.

The town itself dated back to the Romans and held some tells of its age. The main square featured a Temple of Minerva and Cistern.

We also hit up a few other churches, including the “Chiesa Nuova” build in 1615 where St. Frances was born and lived until he was 24, The Basilica of St Claire, St. Rufino Cathedral or “Duomo di San Rufino”, St Peter’s Church “Chiesa di San Pietro”, and one that I have a photo of but can’t remember of find online what it’s called.


Chiesa Nuova


The Basilica of St Claire


St. Rufino Cathedral or “Duomo di San Rufino”


St Peter’s Church “Chiesa di San Pietro”


Church in Assisi

Finally we hiked above the town to the “Eremo delle Carceri”. This is a convent turned prison turned museum that towers above the town, itself on a hill.

The complete album from Assisi including inside the churches and around the town:
https://plus.google.com/photos/111221349198606775660/albums/5862010840111467969