Our New Home, Again

We hit the road again this morning, on to our next home away from home. We are now in Perugia, in the region of Umbria in Italy. Perugia is about as much in the center of Italy as you can get. It is in a wine region, very near Assisi, Montepulciano, Orvieto, probably an hour south of Florence.

Our plan when we left this morning was to take small roads to Perugia, perhaps stopping for lunch in some small hill town in Tuscany. Shortly outside of Padua, we hit a traffic jam to end all traffic jams. Cars were at a dead stop, while scooters buzzed by on either side of us. We never did find out why we were at a stop, because after sitting there for 45 minutes or so, we asked our GPS (with whom we have developed quite a close relationship by this point; we’ve named her Giselle) to refigure our route. She had us turn around, and after driving for 15 minutes or so, we discovered we had only gotten about 30 kilometers (or 18 miles) from Padua. We said never mind to the small roads, and got on the motorway to drive to Perugia.

We got here around 3:30 or so and checked into our hotel. We had hit rain about the same time we hit the Tuscan region, and it was still raining quite hard. We brought our things in, which always takes a bit of time. While we think we are traveling light, we still fill up the trunk of our little car. Fortunately, by getting the little convertible, we actually got a bigger trunk than the sedan.

Since it was raining, we elected not to try and visit the city center tonight. Instead, we found a grocery store and bought some supplies for an in-room picnic. We dined on salami, proscuitto crudo, pears, gorgonzola cheese, and pickles. We also had some wine – a really nice Sangiovese Di Romagna, one of the grapes of the region, that cost a total of 1,48 euros, or about $2.25. We love the price of wine in Italy.

Our room is simple and on the third floor of the Hotel Tirrenus, but we have a little balcony. It’s a bit cool tonight, but Bill went outside and had a cigar. We sat out there and watched the cars go by on the local road and listened to the neighborhood children play. The sky changed from the grey of earlier in the day to a gorgeous pink at sunset. When it warms up (hopefully tomorrow) we will be able to sit out more and enjoy more of the sights and sounds.

Tomorrow we will head into the city center to explore our new home and its surrounds for six days.