Category Archives: Festivals and Sagras

Rockin’ Umbertide

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We saw our most recent guests off yesterday. Ron and Linda live in Florence. We picked them up at the train station. It was a spectacular day. We headed to Castiglione del Lago for lunch at the Monna Lisa restaurant. We sat outside. The food was good and we enjoyed watching the piazza. We headed back to Umbertide over the mountain pass above the lake.
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The next day we went to Gubbio. Again a spectacular day. Ron and Linda travel by trains and busses and Gubbio is darn near impossible to reach that way. Here are a few pictures in Gubbio. It was such a perfect day I snapped quite a few.
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The night before our guests left we were treated to a concert.
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Friday was the beginning of the annual Otto Cento celebration in Umbertide. (last year Otto Cento post) Preparations had begun…
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The town was really rocking last night! Our friend Michelle volunteered to be a “lady of the night” at the Bordello. She was cute in her bustier and flowers at her throat and wrists.
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More to come… Otto Cento is four days long.

Guest-less for now

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Our latest guests, Steve and Shiromi have gone on to new adventures in Turkey. We very much enjoyed their stay. After our visit to Gubbio we decided the other big town to see would be Perugia. We did some shopping and explored what is left of the fortress built after the Salt war. It was commissioned by the Pope as a symbol of Papal power and was built in 1540. They rased an entire borgo (over 100 houses plus churches and monasteries) to include the houses of the Baglioni family whom the Pope hated. It is eerie to wander what were the streets of the borgo and see the remains of all the houses, which were built of stone as opposed to the brick of the fortress. Here are some photos. It is hard to show the scale of the place. the ceilings are very tall.

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This is a street sign (!) underground.
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We also visited the enormous Etruscan gate. It was built 2,400 years ago and used no mortar. Impressive.
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When Cesar Augustus conquered the city he carved his name into the gate.
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Relaxing in the main piazza. Note the little buzzer in the center of the table to call for service. I’d never seen this before.
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We had a lovely lunch at Ristorante Antica trattoria san Lorenzo. We had been here before and enjoyed the very innovative cuisine. Steve and Shiromi enjoyed it too. We all had the lunch special. This first picture is the little “gift” from the chef before we got the appetizer.
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This was the rabbit.
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We bid Steve and Shiromi goodbye on Thursday. Since then we have been relaxing a little. Right now Umbertide is having the week-long concert festival called Rassegna Bande Musicali Citta di Umbertide. The concert bands come from towns all around us and are very good, most performing excerpts that are very familiar like the march in Carmen. Sorry for the blur!
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I also learned an interesting factoid. Here in Italy you are buried on a Friday, married on a Saturday, and christened on a Sunday! I enjoy watching the weddings from our window. Yesterday there were two that I noticed. The first had an impressive Lincoln stretch limo. The picture below is of the second wedding. This bride was really rocking it out! They had a very loud sound system set up and a DJ spinning the tunes. And note her red shoes!
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Tomorrow we greet Ron and Linda, Americans who live in Florence. We met them in Virginia before they moved to Italy about 5 years ago. We were at that time just dreaming of moving here so we picked their brains about how they were accomplishing it. They don’t have a car and use the rails to travel. We’ll pick them up at the station and visit some places they can’t reach by train. I am looking forward to seeing them.

May day

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Wow do they keep the Umbertide band busy or what?! Friday May 1 is a European-wide holiday similar to Labor day in the US. We had the band out again. The local union leaders and polititians got up on the podium and speechified for a couple of hours. Umbertide is majority communist so labor unions etc. are very important. Later they blessed the tractors… I missed it but I am told it is the tradition.
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After my sister and her husband left I asked them, since they were the first to use the guest room, what it lacked. All in all it served them well. The only issue is the odd steps in our hallway ready to trip you up in a very real sense. These steps are between the guest room and the designated guest bath. For their visit we moved a small lamp from their room into the hallway. It did the job but was a temporary fix. After they left I purchased a night light which is activated automatically. It comes on when the lights go out.

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The weather is very beautiful now. Sunny and warm. It will be in the 80s for the next few days. It makes me want to plant things so I purchased some plants from our market and we got some dirt from the hardware store just down the street. Here is what I call the herb corner.

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Sweet basil. Here they sell it oddly. You don’t get just one plant. Rather you get a densely packed bunch of small stems. I have to see how this works out.

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First of the flowers. Three lonely petunias. There will be more soon.

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View of Umbertide in the evening sun.

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Finally here are my purchases from our Wednesday market. The strawberries are local now. The artichokes are perfect and YES! those are new spring peas. Sauteed them in some butter with salt and pepper. So sweet!

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