Category Archives: Umbertide

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.

Summer’s bounty!

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I love when the summer produce is at it’s peak, and that is right now! I always get carried away it is all so beautiful. I buy too much! Saturday at the Zero K market, where it all comes from right around here, I bought what you see in the picture below. On the right (above the arugula and next to the bowl) there are four small red/orange eggplants. I have never seen this color before. I am going to try them in a pasta sauce. I got our first watermelon and I’ll serve it with feta as a salad. The red and white beans are here all summer and I will probably add these to a sausage based pasta sauce. The heirloom tomatoes in the bowl are so sweet and perfect right now. I hope the nice man who is so proud of growing them keeps coming. He has all the types I am used to from the US. I remember last year he only came one time. It was very wet and I imagine he lost his crop. This year is hot and great for the tomatoes and this was his fourth week here.  The peaches on the right are apparently very famous and from Monte Corona. They sell them on Saturdays out of an old monastery and also at the market in Umbertide. We drove over to the monastery and were amazed at the caravan of cars buying them. Who knew!?

So much to cook!
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Last night I made fajitas! It has been a long time. I actually had to make the flour tortillas myself. They are much better than what we got in the US stores too. I had to use ghee (which I had brought with me) instead of the vegetable shortening. I need to see if they have anything like Crisco here. I made a nice salsa with fresh tomatoes (YUM) and onion, lime, and diced jalapenos from my pepper plants. Spicy and good! I grilled onions and peppers and then grilled the steak that I had marinated overnight in cumin, chili powder, garlic and onion with some lime juice and oil. The fajitas came out great and I’ll make them again.

And lately I have been enjoying my new favorite drink – an Aperol Spritz. So refreshing. It is 3 parts Prosecco, 2 parts Aperol and a splash of soda with a slice of orange. The taste of the Aperol is quite bitter so it is not a cloyingly sweet drink. Tastes great at the Bar Mary on the Piazza or anywhere else!
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Finally I was contacted by a man in NYC who does the casting for House Hunters International. He sent me a VERY extensive questionnaire. I guess most people know that the show is about people who buy houses abroad. Maybe you didn’t know that they are filmed after the fact. For instance, if we were chosen to do a show they would fly us back to Virginia where they would film the “back story” of us before we flew off to look for a house in Italy. They would do a one day shoot. Then they would do four days here in Italy of us looking at three houses one of which would be our house. They would pack up and move all of our stuff out of the apartment to put it back to the way it was before. Then they put all our stuff back and film us after we had moved in. I am of two minds about this. Seems quite disruptive especially because we are in the Centro and they would be filming and moving stuff about. Not sure how the Umbertidese would feel about that. We probably won’t be chosen anyway but it is something to think about.

HOT!

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We have been dealing with a heat wave for almost two weeks. It is getting into the upper nineties to the low hundreds and predicted to last another week. No rain either so it is very dry. Luckily it has not been terribly humid, and it does cool off as soon as the sun sets. We are still able to sleep with the windows open and a fan. We have been using the AC in the living room in the afternoons. We do what I call “window and shutter management”. At night all the windows are opened wide to encourage the cool night air to come in. In the morning I generally sit on the terrace to take advantage of the coolness. About 10:30am or so I close the shutters on the piazza-facing side of the house and I close the windows. This makes it dark and cave-like. The windows facing the river I leave open for a while longer but as the sun comes over the house they too are shuttered and closed. The living room gets hotter because it has no attic. And it is a big room with a big window with no shutters. It does have the shear shade that I close. That said, I am working in the office right now and it is very hot in here. We eat at about 8pm and mostly we eat outside. The sun is setting just after 8pm now. We have a small TV that we use on the terrace. It is lovely to sit out there and watch a movie of an evening. So now you know how we are beating the heat… or not as the case may be.

Last Friday we were treated to a concert in the piazza. DikDik was the name of the band. They drew quite the crowd. They are a 1960s band that mostly did English tunes translated into Italian. For instance, they did “Hey Jude” and “California Dreamin'” to name two. We sat outside at Bar Mary and enjoyed people watching. They had a hair dresser setup in a tent where women were getting up-dos a la the 1960 beehive look. Later they had a contest. We retired upstairs just when DikDik started at 11PM. But of course we could hear them just fine up here!
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Yesterday, Sunday, we planned to go to “Movie night at the castle”. This is the Civitella Ranieri castle that I have written about before. They invited everyone to bring a picnic and eat on the lawn. Then we all went into a courtyard where a sheet was hung to project the movie. It was a 1960s black comedy called Mafioso. It is out of print and has been deemed notable enough to be saved by the Criterion Collection. It was a beautiful evening and just being at this beautiful 15th century castle is a treat. Here are our friends Michelle and Paul and Luther at our picnic.

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Tomorrow we have plans to attend a performance by the Royal Conservatory of Scotland of excerpts from Rossini called “Raucous Rossini”. It only lasts one hour and is being performed in the Teatro dei Riuniti here in Umbertide centro. It is in a medieval building that sits just next to the castle fortress, La Rocca. I have not had a chance to see the theater yet so I am excited. After the show there is a reception at Galeria Littlewood, a small art gallery and shop. AND after that, we have reservations at Calagrana for a specialty evening of Italian “small plates”. So it is shaping up to be a fun time. I will report back.

Home again, home again

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Yay, I am back in beautiful U-town also know as Umbertide. Our trip back from Slovenia in the injured Porsche was uneventful I am happy to say. We have an appointment to take it to the dealer on Tuesday. I hope it is not anything serious.

Thoughts on our trip. I liked Udine pretty well. No reason to return that I can think of. Bergenland at the Neusiedlersee was very Austrian if not Alpine. The area is nice. It was unexpectedly cool and wet. The food was not notable but Luther got his schnitzel hit. Budapest is a big, noisy city. The hotel was nice. The people in the city were not very friendly. I, for one will not return to Hungary. The experience with the Porsche dealership there was horrible. It colored my opinions. Bratislava is beautiful and welcoming – I would go back. Our hotel was nice but not spectacular. The food was only OK. Lake Bled in Slovenia was beautiful and relaxing. Our hotel, Berc Garni was very Austrian in feel. Lots of wood. A nice balcony. When a hotel says Garni, in German that means they have no restaurant. But right next door was the sister hotel Berc Pensione. We ate the best food of the trip here, and both nights it was that good. The kitchen was outside which I thought was interesting.

Now that I am back in Italy and “at home” I have time to think about our first year here. Our arrival anniversary was June 25, during our trip. I can’t say that I have hit the place that many have written/warned about where I regretted the move. Oh, sometimes I am homesick yes, and I miss my sister but I do not regret that I came here. Life here is infinitely more interesting than my former life. I am constantly stimulated. Whereas, everything in Virginia was so familiar to me that, unless I had challenged myself with some activities outside my norm, I was bored. So, here’s to Italia and my life here. Still having fun!

When we got home on July 2, our house sitter moved out and life returned to normal. We walked to the grocery store, the wine shop and the butcher to buy provisions. I got hamburgers to grill on the fourth of July. Also marinated chicken to grill on Luther’s birthday, July 5.

The holiday rolled around with little fanfare. Gosh! no fireworks?! What are Umbertidese thinking? It fell on a Saturday so I went to the kilometer zero market to buy veggies. I bought some squash blossoms on impulse. Then I needed to get ricotta to stuff them. Happily there is a stand at the market where there is local pecorino cheese as well as home-made ricotta and mozzarella.

Remember that I now am the proud owner of several hot varieties of pepper plants? The Jalapeno had a couple of plump specimens so I roasted and minced them and mixed them into the ricotta and added some panna granna. Then I stuffed this mix into the squash blossoms, made some batter and dipped and fried them. Yum! they were very good. Happy fourth of July! Here is my pepper plant.
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So a few posts back I took a picture of the sunflower fields outside Umbertide. While we were on our vacatiion they bloomed and now are nearly past their prime but I got another picture of them yesterday. It is very, very hot here right now, 98 F! It was about 5PM and they should have been facing us but they were not. SO after all that I couldn’t return without a picture even if their backs were toward me.

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And finally, while we were gone a lady pigeon decided our gutter was the perfect place to set up housekeeping. I don’t know what she will do if we get a thunderstorm. The cats are fascinated and sit by the railing. They can’t see her but they either hear or smell her. They don’t seem to bother her in the least. Here is her picture. Good luck to you pigeon!

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A walk in the fields and a road trip

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Yesterday we went for a nice walk down the river and through the fields nearby. All the crops are on schedule. This first picture is of the sunflower or Girasola field before the flowers open. I will go back in a couple of weeks when they bloom. Umbertide is in the distance.

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The grapes are tiny versions of their future selves. Hoping for a good harvest this year!

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And finally the winter wheat, planted last November is ready to harvest.

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Tomorrow we begin our first big road trip after moving here. We are driving north. The first stop will be Udine in the Fruilli area near the Slovenian border for just one night. Onward to the wine region of Austria for 3 nights. Then we visit Budapest for 3 nights. After that we visit Bratislava in Slovakia for 2 nights. Heading back south we stop in Slovenia at Bled in the Alps for 2 nights. All these places are between 2 and 4 hours apart and they are all in different countries! We have been to all except Hungary before. Actually we visited Czechoslovakia before it split into two countries so maybe technically we didn’t visit Slovakia. In case you are wondering we have a nice couple of friends coming to house/cat sit for us. Makes my trip much better to know the boys are being looked after.

Some interesting weather and pictures

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We have been having summery weather with some storms and pretty sunsets. I thought I’d share a couple of photos from the last week or so. This one is a gorgeous sunset.

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Our weather comes from the west and our terrace faces that way so we are treated with seeing the storms approach. Oddly this one loomed up and over us and then disappeared. Here is one of the storm with the sun behind the cloud.

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On Sunday we planned to meet Shirley and Frank over in Montepulciano for lunch at our favorite place, La Grotta. Before we left home however, I glanced out and there was a wedding in progress. They had four of the classic Fiat 500s with white bows on them awaiting the wedding party. (the fourth one got lost, was red, and showed up later) I wished I could have seen the bride, in her voluminous dress, get into one of these babys!
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It was kind of cloudy and cool. We decided to visit a winery on the way to MonteP named Tenute del Cerro. I will only post one picture of the countryside from the winery here as we have to wait for the Wine Guy to write his post about it. It was a fantastic place.

Beautiful huh?
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Lunch was great, and to make your mouth water, here is what I had. First an interesting salad with shaved, raw asparagus, shaved parmesan, and a poached egg.

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Next Tagliatella with goose ragu. YUM!
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Dog show

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So how else would you celebrate the day Italy became Italy? Of COURSE! A dog show!

I was right. The pens I saw were for the different categories of dogs to be judged. We visited among the dogs and I took a couple of pictures from our window. The show went on the entire day! From about 9AM until 6PM. Pictures were taken, ribbons were won! Everyone had fun.

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And this is relatively disgusting. Luther went for pizza last night and bought this. Look closely. Yes, those are hot dog slices and actual french fries on there. Ugh.

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Cedro

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Today was market day. We went out to purchase our fruits and vegetables as usual. Today the woman that we usually buy our vegetables from showed us an unusual citrus fruit. It was about the size of a grapefruit but she said it was between a lemon and an orange. Curious, I decided to bring one home. Looking it up on Google – it is called a Cedro – it said it is one of the 3 citrus’ that all subsequent citrus came from. It is a very old species. The ancient Greeks had it. Here are some pictures.

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Next to a normal lemon.
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Now I just have to figure out how to use it. The woman at the veggie stand mentioned a salad or with fish. Also on the internet was a picture of it halved. Seems only 20% of it is edible. Most of it is peel!

Also there is another phenom going on here right now. It looks like snow but it’s some plant that is broadcasting it’s seeds on puffs of white. I’ve seen this before but not to this extent. The stuff is piling up like snow drifts in all the corners, on stairs and especially in our garage. It swirls around our feet. I tried to open the windows today. All have screens but the big one in the living room. I had to close that one because so much of the stuff was coming in. I tried to take a picture but it really doesn’t give the real feel of the quantity of the stuff. Anyway, here it is. You can sort of see the white bits of fluff. Sure hope it stops soon!

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