Perugia

To begin today’s post I would like to share an ingenious moment of Kelsey Tayler Fagan.  I was kindly letting her use my phone to write an e-mail.  She began typing but stopped abruptly, handed me the phone and said, “Oh! This is on T-9!”  I took it from her and looked at her confused…”Kelsey, it’s a full keyboard.”  If you don’t get the joke ask someone under the age of 20.  FYI Kelsey hates typing in T-9.

Today we went to Perugia, which is about an hour bus ride from Santa Chiara.  We arrived a little early and had to wait around the bus station.  While we were inside the station, an older man came up to us, muttered something in Italian, pointed at a man sleeping on a bench, and then laughed and shoved Kelsey.  We had no idea what he was saying, but after a while another Italian started yelling at him, and we roughly translated it as “Leave the Americans alone.”  As we quickly started to filter out (not quick enough), the younger man that was defending us started to yell at the old guy, and the old guy put his fist up, and apparently took a swing!  I walked out while they were yelling at each other in Italian, and when I looked back at the door as we were walking away the young guy was outside having a smoke.  That was our first impression of Perugia.

We went down an escalator and then up some stairs and then down some stairs and then up an escalator and ended up in a tunnel.  We soon found out that we were in a medieval town, perfectly preserved.  As our tour guide Mara (from Orvieto) told us, this was once the town of Perugia, and where there was a barrel vault in the ceiling now there had once been a clear view to the sky.  There were different rooms where shops had been, streets and paths, but it was completely vacant.  Long story short, Pope Paul III moved into town, wanted to shut down the wealthy family that ran the town, so he built a castle on top of the city, and then they hated him. 

We went to a garden with lots of benches and homeless people.  It had a beautiful view of the Umbrian valley, and we could see Assisi from the park.  We went to the Galleria Nazionale dell’Umbria, where we saw artwork and artifacts from the 1400s-1900s.  I’m sure it was all really cool and historically important, but we were all still exhausted from the two weeks of traveling we had just gotten back from, so everyone was in a mummy-like phase as we went through the museum.  All I remember is Saint Francis was important, and there were a lot of chubby baby Jesus’s.  Oh, and either Raphael or Michaelangelo was a pedophile.  (I think she used the wrong word).

For lunch we went to a place recommended by Geoff Ekey (who we call Ja-fee-key, one word).  It was called Dal Mi’ Cocco, and was a restaurant where you pay a certain amount for wine, water, bread, pasta, meat, dessert and coffee.  There are a lot of restaurants like this in Italy, but usually they cost a lot more than this one did.  They were very friendly here and it was all very fancy, and we had a great time stuffing ourselves with delicious food.  We loosened our pants and wandered around Perugia during our free time in the afternoon, stopping in some shops and a bank where we saw more frescoes, until we finally took the bus back to Cast F.no. 

When we got home, it was almost dinner time, but we were all still full from lunch.  It’s sad that my biggest problem is having too much delicious food.  On a political note, I’m upset with the world for hating America for not feeding Africa.  It’s become clear to me that Italy is the country taking all the food and eating it without giving any to their neighbor to the south. 

To update you on spills of the day, I have been very good at not getting anything on myself.  The tables I have sat at, however, have a lot of evidence.  I have yet to master this family style dining, where I have to serve myself pasta without the noodles dragging on the table or missing my plate.

Words that Italians have trouble with…

Thought – One of our tour guides was translating a very deep quote, and ended it with, “my mind is full of tots.”
Revolution - Revo-low-tion, low like plow
Knife - often pronounce the K, but then again so does my mom.

Cara Marie