Oddly enough, here I am most content when riding a bus/train with my ipod and the Italian countryside. The trip through Umbria was only about 2ish hours, but I kind of didn't want it to end; I just set my ipod to shuffle and zoned out staring at all the green hills. Anytime a Jason Mraz popped up I gave an earbud to Kelsey and we semi sang along.
We arrived in the early afternoon at the villa we would stay at for the weekend. There is a fourteenth century house on the estate, and next to it the family built some student housing and conference spaces. It reminded me a lot of a bed and breakfast, the rooms were adorable. The villa was set on the top of a hill (all of Umbria is hills), and across the street from the entrance was this giant castle. It was being restored so we couldn't go in, but we still managed sneak around to explore it a good deal.
The people in charge had assigned us to rooms, but Giuseppe thought he'd be nice and ask if we could pick our roommates. I was all for it at the time because I was assigned with someone I don't get along with, but then they called my name first and asked who I wanted to room with. Of course I had to be first... I sat there and said "who wants to live with me?" and didn't look behind me. I just watched from the front row as Giuseppe scanned the room and his face didn't change or pause at anyone, so then I just yelled out my roommates names. I found out later that 4 girls behind me had all enthusiastically raised their hands. Oops!
We had a few hours to chill at the villa before heading to Coricano, which is the next town over. My roommates and I ran into Giuseppe and he took us along with him to pick wild asparagus behind the house. I think this was my favorite part of the weekend, we were trekking through these garden-type woods behind the house and letting Giuseppe find all the asparagus. I think the whole time I found one stalk--those things are so hard to spot, in the wild they're tiny! But this area was beautiful, filled with lilac trees.
Before we headed to Corciano, we went to go take some pictures of the scenery. But one can only have so many pictures of hills, so we then decided to make it interesting. We began to take pictures of ourselves jumping in mid-air, and they turned out so funny. We joke about Megan being a ninja, and so she and Kelsey began to mid-air duel, and it looked awesome. Of course there was a large group from our program watching us look like jumping idiots the whole time--but still worth it.
Then we drove to Corciano to be greeted by the mayor of the small hill town. The place was pretty, but kind of boring. The most interesting part happened before we got on the bus to leave, when a car full of guys drove past, saw 25 girls waiting for the bus, and pulled over. They waved to us when we drove away, and then proceeded to follow the bus to Corciano! Creepers! Later on they came back and parked outside the villa while we were getting dinner. Kelsey saw their car after eating, and then my friend Christina went out and started talking to them. She invited them to come listen to our prof Ruggero sing after dinner, and they stood in the back corner and watched. Afterward, I got Christina to introduce me so I could ask them why they followed us to Corciano (yep, I wanted to mess with them a little). They were Leonardo, Francesco and Filippo; 2 spoke some English, one didn't speak any. But Leah and I talked to these guys for at least an hour, just joking around in an interesting mix of English and Italian. They turned out to be pretty cool. And we realized early on that if we spoke English fast enough, we could talk about them right in front of them without them understanding. HeheOk, now to describe dinner. We had been told previously that we would get great food prepared by the villa's cook Paola, so needless to say I was expecting a lot. I was very, very wrong. The prima piatto came out and it was luke warm tortellini, which wasn't too bad since we were absolutely starving. If I had known what was coming I would have asked for seconds. Next up was meatloaf and dry salad. COLD meatloaf. I took one bite, trying to be a trooper, and I just couldn't do it. Maybe if it had been warmer I could have choked more down. But it smelled like the canned food I feed my cats at home, and I absolutely could not bring myself eat it. I felt bad, you know, starving-kids-in-India bad, but I couldn't do it. I threw some balsamic on the salad and ate that, then finished the meal with what I will call chocolate brownie since it was too dry to be cake. We were so hungry and so disappointed I think we nearly cried.
After Ruggero sang on the terrace, I hung out with the 4 girls that had raised their hands to room with me: Leah, Sarah, Faith and Christina. I love these girls, they are hilarious. Faith and Christina had been drinking while we had been talking to i ragazzi italiani, so they were pretty entertaining. They had mixed licorice-flavored anise with pineapple juice, how sick does that sound!
That morning was brisk to the point of being downright cold. I brought a North Face with me having looked at the weather report, but I was still freezing. Once we got on the bus, my roommates and I all tangled our legs and arms up and huddled for warmth. The first visit of the day, to a church that belonged to the Knights Templar, didn't help the situation much as it was also incredibly cold. But this place was incredible, I walked in and literally said "woah this is old." After getting a presentation from the architect in charge of the restoration, we got to go under the church and walk through an excavation that had been done. Below the church they had found the remains of an ancient Roman fullery--a place where cloth was made and dyed. I want to know how one goes about excavating something like that underneath a church? Do you just prop the church up and dig until you hit something?
After the first church on the outskirts of Perugia, we drove to Assisi and met up with Friar Claudio at S. Damiano church. The church was down this massive, steep hill which was an absolute bitch to climb back up. It was worse than going up the 462 stairs up the Duomo, my quads are still a little sore. But Claudio was the nicest man, really calm and told us all about Saint Francis in English because he wanted to practice. He honestly looked a little like my friend Andy. We did a walk-through of the small church, and I was not entirely impressed. I was even a little shocked when we went through the second floor and found a gift shop! Something about that made me a little uncomfortable. However, they were selling art and prints done by the monks, and a lot of students bought things.
Following our visit to S. Damiano, we drove across Assisi to see the massive church of S. Francis of Assisi. This place was incredible. Probably one of my favorite things thus far. Every single wall was covered in these magnificent frescos. I spent all of out allotted time gawking at the walls of the first floor, I only had a few minutes to go up and check out the even more remarkable second floor! I have to go back.Also in the church of S. Francis is the tomb of S. Francis of Assisi. You go down some stairs into a small little room with a big stone structure in the middle (I assumed that was the tomb) surrounded by pews for people to pray. When I was trying to get to the stairs this horrible woman held out her arm and wouldn't let me into the file of people, I was so shocked! The audacity, we were in a freaking church! I made it in right behind her and when she turned around to look at me I made a face at her. Once you get downstairs the entire place is silent. I thought it was extremely funny that as I was in the line walking through, I heard someone hardcore blow their nose in the back pew. Didn't even try to stifle it, they just blew as hard as they could--so much for silence. I had to try so hard not to laugh!
We were running late and couldn't explore the town of Assisi, though I would have preferred that to driving to Perugia to visit the museum we saw. But before going to Perugia we had to make a small personal stop. It was Giuseppe's birthday, and as such his friend had invited him to his house for a few drinks. This friend was the Count of Perugia, and showed us all around his house that was actually a castle on top of a hill! Such a cool place, there are medieval paintings and furniture everywhere! I was ready to ask if he needed another granddaughter. Then we all shared some champagne and continued on our way to Perugia.
The museum was being renovated and wasn't open to the public yet, so we got to see a small section of it. Honestly was pretty boring since I know nothing about the Etruscans or the bronze age. I did, however, find these bronze safety pins in one display case. Seriously, safety pins!! Never knew they were around back then, it blew my mind.
It started to rain, but before we headed back to the bus we did about 30 minutes of shopping on the main road in Perugia. This consisted entirely of going to the Perugina store and buying chocolate. I didn't know it before this weekend, but Perugina is the Italian version of Hershey's. They make these wildly popular chocolate ball things called baci, which means kiss in Italian. Except they're better than Hershey's kisses, they're basically chocolate-hazelnut kisses. I hadn't realized that the chocolate Easter egg I bought myself was a Perugina egg filled with baci! I'm pretty excited to eat it, but I also kind of want to save it...Quickly, I have to tell you about the metro in Perugia. The city is all on a hill, so I didn't know they could have a metro line. But we took this metro to get back to our bus, and I'll tell you it was just like a ride at Disneyland! They are these cute (tiny!) little metro cars, and the tracks go up and down and around curves like riding on a slow version of the Matterhorn. Loved it.
When we got back to the villa we were starved, and we were really hoping dinner would be better. It wasn't by much. Again, pasta first and this time we knew to get seconds. Then this luke-warm beef and cooked spinach came. It was better than the meatloaf so I ate it. That is, I ate it until Jennifer found the plastic part of a tag (like what you find on new clothes) in her meat! How does that even get there?? I immediately spit my food out. Then about 5 minutes later, I hear Christina say across the table "You've got to be kidding me!!..." and we look up to see her holding some other unidentified piece of plastic. It was a little gross, but we were still hysterical!
So to make up for dinner, we began to drink as many free wine bottles as possible. It turned into somewhat of a game, we had to make sure our bottle was empty when one of the servers walked around. At the end of dinner my table of 5 girls had finish 4 bottles of crappy house red. And believe me we were feeling it. That's probably why the plastic in our food was so funny.Since it was Giuseppe's birthday dessert was better that night. There was tiramisu, some layered cake with chocolate sauce, and the white cake with cream we had bought Giuseppe as a birthday present in Perugia. The waiters brought around different cake to everyone, some lucky ones got a piece of the cream cake. Leah and I got the chocolate sauce one, which wasn't bad, but we wanted the cream. So we walked up to the table with a few pieces still left on it, and right as the server walked out the door we each grabbed a piece and booked it back to our table. It was the wine that made me do it! But goodness that cake was good!
Unfortunately, the boys from the previous night never came back to visit, though we were hoping they would. So instead my room filled with people to hang out after dinner, and we started to play cards. In this game aces were dares, and poor Christina kept pulling aces. At one point she had to get on her hands and knees and sing a verse from the Lion King, then roar. Then at 2am she had to crab crawl down the hallway and chant "I want to be an Airborne Ranger." Random, I know, but Morgan came up with it... I had a blast, it was such a fun night.
The next day we watched Paola give a demonstration on how to make pasta, and it seems pretty easy. Maybe when I get home I'll get a pasta press and give it a shot. We then had a lunch of homemade fettuccine and bruschetta. The first hot meal of the weekend! And on that note we hopped on the bus for Rome. Alright, so there are all the details, now you're all caught up!
1 comment:
Boy Natalie, Major Party time. You are getting quite the tour
Love DAD
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