[Idyllchat] Umbria

[acricchi]

We loved our Umbria Untour.  Your local town Spoleto has lots of nooks and crannies to explore.  My husband was ready to relocate there permanently.  Assisi, of course, is a must and if it suits, you may want to go to Sunday Mass at the Basilica - very impressive.  In fact, right before mass we stopped into the restaurant on the Basilica's square, Ristorante San Francesco, and made reservations for Sunday lunch - the owner said we had the  last available table. After church, we had a fantastic meal there and, despite its proximity to a church visited by hundreds of tourists, we were the only Americans there. 

The small town of Trevi is fun to explore as is Deruta especially if you like ceramics.  We liked Perugia but it is definitely a big city and an acquired taste.  We parked down by the train station and took the bus up, up and up the steep hill to the Piazza IV Novembre.  Spent the rest of the day seeing the sights as we walked back down to our car.  Less busy and worth the scenic trip is Orvieto.  We really enjoyed our day there, especially visiting the Duomo, one of Italy's most beautiful cathedrals, and had a terrific lunch at Tipica Trattoria Etrusca (in Frommer's Guidebook at the time).  Actually, we found it difficult to find a less-than-delicious meal in Italy.

We found Internet service in a variety of places - used one in Assisi several times.  One Sunday afternoon in Trevi we were visiting the little museum there and when I asked the lady at the desk if there was an Internet place in the town so I could email my children, she insisted I use her computer.  Italians are incredibly like that as you may already know.  Another favorite memory was encountering a nursery school class in a Spoleto bookstore and when the teacher heard us speaking English, she had the children sing a song for us which was basically a tune set to saying Hello about thirty times.  It was adorable.  

Finally, re driving or training we drove to Umbria from Venice (piece of cake) and then from Umbria to Rome.  The latter was the worse drive we've ever had in Italy with busy superhighways, construction and zillions of large trucks careening around curves.  Fortunately, it was only about two hours and we went right to the airport to turn in the car and stay overnight for an early morning flight.  We wouldn't make that drive again. 

Ann
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Karen Peters 
  To: idyllchat at lists.untours.com 
  Sent: Tuesday, March 13, 2007 11:14 AM
  Subject: [Idyllchat] Umbria


  We have reservations for Girasole, Spoleto in October.

  Please share anything about that particular apartment, the area, suggestions for day trips--and please please--where is the closest INTERNET?

  We also have to decide whether to drive from Rome or take the train.  Your thoughts?

  Thanks much.

  ======
  Karen Peters
  kempeters at gmail.com  
   


------------------------------------------------------------------------------


  _______________________________________________
  This message was sent by IdyllChat.
  To reply or send a new message, email to:
  IdyllChat at lists.untours.com

  Visit the IdyllChat archives:
  http://mailman.dca.net/pipermail/idyllchat/

  Search Idyllchat Archives for any subject at: http://search.dca.net/sites/untours/main.html
  >
  Read real Untourists' candid accounts of their Untours: 
  > http://www.untours.com/triplogs.html To unsubscribe, change to digest delivery, or 
  temporarily pause delivery, visit:
  http://mailman.dca.net/mailman/listinfo/idyllchat
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://mailman.dca.net/pipermail/idyllchat/attachments/20070313/6c997c1a/attachment.htm