Ceiling in apartment below

We had a meeting set up with Emanuele this morning at 11. We were outside on the piazza and I saw Josephine (remember her from the meter reading incident?) waving at me from a window beneath our apartment. It was evident that she wanted us to come up which we did. This is the apartment just under our new apartment that is owned by the Swiss lady. Josephine took us into this apartment and we saw damage done to the ceiling due to the work in our apartment above. Some of the mortar between the stones in the ceiling had crumbled and fallen to the floor and on the bed. Turns out Josephine has had keys to this apartment for many years. The Swiss lady has died and she got a letter from the attorney handling the estate. They will be selling or renting the apartment. Josephine showed us around. It is a lovely place with 3 big bedrooms, and enormous bathroom, sun porch, living room and updated kitchen. Very nice overall if furnished a bit old fashioned. We assured Josephine that we would talk to our Geometra about the damage to the ceiling.

We waited for Emanuele to meet us in the piazza but he never showed up so we bought some pizza-to-go from the local bakery for our lunch. This was some EXCELLENT pizza. This shop is always so crowded I never tried to buy anything or it was sold out but today it was nearly empty and had pizza. I got a Pizza con funghi (with mushrooms) yum.

I went up to the apartment since I had seen all the workmen leaving and took a look around. They have done a lot of work. They have removed all the wood from the floors they took up. They have removed most of the tiles from the kitchen floor. There were a number of big buckets filled with debris waiting to be removed. They have jack hammered trenches into the floor from the old kitchen into the new one for the water, drains, and gas. The pipes have all been laid. Out on the patio I found they had punched a hole through the wall for the drains to go into the pipe, or an Emanuele calls it, the Tube (waste water pipe). No wonder the ceiling downstairs had crumbled! Anyway, it all looks good. Here are pictures of the debris buckets, trenches, and hole through the wall.

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Big doings in Umbertide

So, let me set the record straight. The Feste that we are in the midst of right now is called Rassegna Bande Musicali. It is from September 2 to September 8. It is not the big festival that I thought it was. It is marching bands. So far on the 2nd we had one band who played one song on the bandstand and marched off playing into Umbertide never to be seen again. I think things may pick up nearer the weekend.

That said the BIG 800 festival is to start NEXT week on Thursday. That would be September 11. It goes through Sunday the 14th. As we walked down the street this morning we saw many things changing around here. We see there is a costume rental place opening up just down the street. How cool is that? I could rent a 17th century costume! I think I will hold off for this year to see what it’s all about 🙂 There are other changes. There is an interesting canopy in the alley beside our house that wasn’t there before. Also another shop down the street is a Taverna del Tintorio. Not sure what that is. We took a drive to Montone to walk around and got stuck in a traffic jam! It was because the streets were blocked. They are removing the huge crane on the church. I had heard it would be gone for the big 800 feste and so it will be.

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The Via Roma was completely closed!

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Last night I made the fish for dinner. We had bought fish from these folks before but only trout. We always ask them to clean it which they do. This time I was very disappointed that the fish had not been scaled. Drat. I had to do it myself and I hate that! The fish were very good but next time I have to figure out how to ask for it scaled as well.

I had made an order from Amazon in the UK for a couple of Michelin maps for Tuscany and Emilia Romagna. I used our Via Grilli address for the first time. Until now we’ve had everything shipped to Emanuele’s address. So Luther checked the mail and there was a mailing sticker in our box. The maps wouldn’t fit. The sticker had the words “amazon” and “Bar Mary” on it. HA! When someone orders something too big for the box they give it to Bar Mary and we pick it up there. What a hoot.

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It is a very cool day and again overcast. We did take our trip to Montone for a little walk about. It is a very pretty, very small hill town. We kept our eyes peeled for the garden of John and Libby which we had heard much about. We did spot it and Libby was outside working in it. We had a small chat with them and headed on back to Umbertide. Here are a couple of pictures of the view from there as well as a small street.

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Perugia, more on reno, market day in Umbertide

A lot has happened in the last couple of days. Yesterday morning I said we were headed for Perugia. We left and it was pretty sunny but by the time we got there it had gotten blustery and cold with glowering skies. It did not really rain though, just spitted a few times. I need to get some warmer clothes!

We were headed to scout out the MiniMetro. We found it with no problem. It is small with only 6 stops and goes from the bottom of the hill near the stadium to the very top of the hill town in the center. We purchased our ticket and boarded. It’s fun to watch them operate. They attach themselves to a continuously moving cable. When they reach a station they unhook and small tires convey them to the platform and stop. Then they propel them forward until they hook back onto the cable. They run about every 2 minutes so no waiting. They reach the end of the line then spin around on a turntable and go back. Very steep trip up to Perugia. Takes about 15 minutes to go from end to end with free parking at the bottom and it drops you right at the top in the center of town.

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Arriving in the center on a spectacular overlook of the countryside from up there we head up just a short way to the main area of town. We visited two churches. First was Chiesa di Filippo Neri. I had heard it was incredibly ornate. And it was. I was sorry to see huge cracks in the domes which could have just been in the frescoes, but who knows.
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We walked up the steep narrow streets. It is really a beautiful town with hundreds of tiny, almost cavelike streets.

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We visited the Duomo, or the main cathedral. It was enormous.

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Then we visited the National Gallery of Umbria. If you want to see pre and renaissance art this is the place to go. The works start in about 1230 AD and work up to the 18th century. It is almost all religious in subject matter. Many of the works were beautifully rendered, the colors vibrant. But it was all meant to scare the crap out of the people. Their lives were dominated by the church. I never saw as many “Adoration of the Christ”, “Escape to Egypt”, “Annunciation”, “Cruxifiction”, “Flagellation of Christ” and “Christ going into Heaven” as I’ll ever need to see again! The subject matter varied little. The saints changed over time. I did enjoy it, but I was very done at the end. The first picture is the Griffon which is the symbol of the city. Reminded me of Buckbeak for any Harry Potter fans out there.

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We spent 2 hours in the museum! Then headed out to find lunch. We tried two of Luther’s recommended ones, both were closed, either for good or for lunch that day. We fell back on Da Cesare where we had dined with the Gang on our last trip to Umbria. We ate inside since it was so cold outside. The food was classic Umbrian and we split a mixed Bruschetta antipasti and both had pasta. It was good. Since we returned we have gotten a good recommendation for our next trip for Bottega del Vino from our friend John in Montone. It sounds great and we look forward to trying it.

We headed back on the MiniMetro and then home where we had a meeting with Emanuele at 4:30 at the apartment. We met up with him and his partner Paolo and the Electrician and the Plumber. I had sent a rather curt email in the morning about the fact that the sofa was STILL uncovered which may have lit a little fire under him because they covered it while we were there. We had discussions about the pantry space. It will be a nice big space and he has good ideas for shelving across one whole wall and then on the otherside for part of it. We explained that we wanted some floor space dedicated to the cats which is always a priority. So all is well at Via Grilli – for now.

Today we did a bunch of errands. We first had Cappuccini at Bar Mary and did people watching at the market. Then I did my shopping to include tomatoes, potatoes, onions, arugula, and those red and white beans that are so good. Look at all these peppers!!

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Then we got our porchetta pannini. That stuff is like CRACK! I thought about it all week since last Wednesday. This time Luther didn’t make the mistake of not getting one. Don’t you love the pig face!? Poor pig but I have to see he was much appreciated in his final form.

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Next we hit our favorite seafood stand to buy fish for dinner tonight. We got whole sea bass to try.

Then we split up with Luther going to the barber to get his first haircut. It cost €8.00 (!) It looks way better than the scalp job he got just before we left at the hair cuttery. I went over to the shopping part of the market to see if I could buy some warmer clothes. I scored two nice hoody shirts that are more like sweater material, one has a zipper and is black, the other purple. They cost €3.00 each (!) This stall, like many, you just dig through piles of clothes to find stuff. Then I hit a nicer stall. Everything was hung up and it was nicer quality. I bought a quirky pair of pants with a tweedy look and rolled up bottoms. It is stretchy material, snug in the legs. And a pretty sweater (beige) with a matching infinity scarf. It is very long tunic style. Maybe now that I have an Italian haircut and Italian market bought clothes they won’t immediately know I am foreign! Nah, it’ll never happen 🙂

We headed to the bank next to put down a 50% deposit on the lighting for our house and dropped it off at Emanuele’s office with Paolo. Whew! all done and glad to get back to the apartment to eat our Panini, get out of the cool weather and read a bit.

Demolition

I dropped by the apartment this morning before anyone could start work. I was unhappy to see that they still had not covered our brand new sofa and the place is really dusty from the demolition work. Emanuele promised he would do that a couple of days ago. Oh well.

They have torn up the floors in the new and old kitchens and it looks like they have started to clean out the attic. Here are pictures.

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They have the stage all built for the upcoming festival. Tonight will be the first night. I’ll report back.

Today it is really pretty out but quite cool. Really feels like fall. The sky is partly cloudy. We are going to go to Perugia to actually sightsee today. They have some really good museums there. We are also on a mission to find the MiniMetro. Gary had told us the outermost station has lots of parking and takes you right to the center of town.

We are also searching out a good lunch place of course!

Boxes scheduled; work progressing

We got the notification that our UPak boxes will be delivered on September 12. That works out pretty well for us. It is a Friday so not a busy day on the Piazza. And it is after the big Feste in Umbertide.

I have not told you about this. Every September Umbertide has a huge festival. It is centered around 18th century Umbertide. Everyone wears 18th century costumes. This varies from most other towns around here who almost all do medieval festivals dressing in medieval costumes. The citizenry set up all manner of recreations from that era to include a brothel, a hospital etc. Having never experienced this festival I don’t really know what will happen. All I know is that it starts on September 2 and goes until September 7 – Every night a live performance on the piazza. I am told it is loud. Susan and Gary have been known to leave town to avoid it. Since it is our first time we are eager to experience it. We may be sleep deprived but that will have to be OK. I will post alllll about it once it starts!

Work continues on our apartment. I went up Saturday and they had removed all the cabinets and appliances in the kitchen. The electrician had also removed all the switch plates and was working on the wiring. Here is the former kitchen which will become our pantry and store room.

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We also received our invoice from the lighting place. We have to go to the bank and send them half for a deposit.

Last evening and all night we had intermittent thunderstorms. I shut all the windows. This morning dawned gray and pretty chilly. I have no long sleeved shirts. The shipment can’t come too soon. They predict cool and wet weather for the next couple of weeks. So sorry for the wine makers. It is very bad timing after a too cool summer. Not a good year.

The work has started!!!

I was so excited to run into Emanuele in the Piazza last night while Luther was smoking his cigar. He told us work had started in the apartment today! I went over this morning and sure enough they have moved all the furniture into the living room and have removed the TV and refrigerator. Sorry to say they also removed the built in bookcases in the office. That took me by surprise but oh well, what’s done is done. I believe they started cleaning out the attic too. Here is a picture of the future kitchen with pull down attic stairs.

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Today we went to Sansepulcro in Tuscany only 30 kilometers from Umbertide. It is a pretty little town with lots of little streets. They also have a museum with many 15th century paintings which we visited.

Aldous Huxley called this painting the most beautiful painting in the world. It is called the Resurrection. When up close and personal it is extraordinary which this photo doesn’t really get across.

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There was an amazing collection of old locks and keys. They were extremely intricate and many were beautiful. This picture shows one of them with its key. Notice the triangle and below it the flower and then below that another shape in the key. The lock is just beside it and you can see where the triangle and the flower fit (you need to click to enlarge). They were pretty incredible.

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This is the madonna in a picture from the 1400s by Santi di Tito. She is looking at the Christ child. All of his paintings were wonderful.

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These were random items that I was drawn to.

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After the tour we went to Ristorante Al Coccio for lunch. It was a very “traditional” looking place with lots of knick knacks.

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We chose it because of the aroma wafting from it. It just drew us in! The food was quite a bit different than the Umbrian food we have gotten used to. We started with a traditional Tuscan bread salad as an amuse bouche. The thrifty Tuscans use up old bread this way. By moistening it in the salad dressing of oil and vinegar it softens it up. It was quite refreshing. I had a mushroom flan (never saw that in Umbria) with a cheese fondue and truffles as an antipasti. Then I had the ravioli with Chianini meat sauce from the famous Chianini white cattle. Luther had taglietelle with duck ragu. It was all very good. The people behind us tucked into two big Chianini steaks. We’ll have to go back and get that sometime instead of a primi. It sure smelled wonderful. Here is a picture of my ravioli.

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This evening we met up with Michelle and her partner Paul for a drink in the Piazza. She will be leaving in just 3 days. I will miss her a lot. Paul was interesting and he will be here for 10 days after she goes. He is Dutch. Perhaps we’ll see her again before she leaves. We swapped contact info so we can keep in touch. Maybe someday we will meet again…

Tomorrow I will go over to the apartment so see how Giovani did today. I met him while I was there this morning taking a look at the work.

Porchetta

Yesterday was market day. I decided to get my first porchetta panino. In Italy panini are not grilled or heated. It is just the word for sandwich. Porchetta (pronounced por-kay-ta) is sold from trucks and is the most wonderful concoction. It is a whole pig that has been boned and then wrapped in it’s own skin and roasted for a long slow time. The outside gets crunchy crispy and the inside is soft and juicy. At the Wednesday market there are 3 different porchetta trucks. All the time I’ve been going to the market there is always an enormous crowd around one truck. I always figure that that would be the place to get porchetta as obviously everyone else seems to know.

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For some reason when I was passing THE truck I noticed there were way fewer people. In fact I was served almost immediately. I asked for a panino and they sliced the pork up right onto a soft roll. I intended to save it for lunch but alas I almost didn’t take a picture of it before it was gone! My favorite part was the unexpected crunch of the salty cracklin’ skin.

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My cousin Meg asked me to put up a picture of our sofa in situ in our living room. So here it is. It is very large but fits the space perfectly. It will seat a bunch of folks or two lying down 🙂 I put our two new pillows in the corner.

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We have a friend here whose name is Michelle. She is living in a house just behind us owned by a woman named Hillary who owns Alpacas. Michelle is house/alpaca sitting for 10 weeks while Hilary goes back to England to see her new grandbaby. We met Michelle just when she arrived. She was born and raised in Bermuda and speaks with an American accent. She is adventurous and has lived in many places most recently Cypress in a goat shack as she describes it. She likes to garden on the terrace of Hilary’s place so I brought some of the plastic planters with succulents from our terrace to see if she would like to replant them. In turn she brought me a bag of alpaca shit. I spent a bit of time getting it up to our terrace in stages as it weighed a ton. She tells me that unlike horse manure it doesn’t need to “cure” to be used as fertilizer. I will save it until I get new planters. Michelle will only be here a few more days. I will miss her as she is an interesting person. She is going to get her teaching certificate from Montessori and then she thinks she will move to Vietnam for a while. Her partner crews large tanker ships around Africa. Scary nowadays with all the pirates.

Yesterday evening around 9PM or so we heard a lot of people talking from BEHIND our house. This is unusual as it is a tiny little alley of a street and is normally very quiet. It is the same street that has the cat ladder I mentioned. I peered down from our window and saw a bunch of folks and several long tables with benches all set for feast. And feast they did!

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It got very loud and they had an accordion. It sounded like the perfect Italian celebration. We weren’t sure of the occasion but I think it was an engagement party. I suppose it could have been an anniversary party for a long married couple. Whatever it was it was obvious they were having fun. I got up at 12:30 and it was silent and there wasn’t a trace of the party. The picture above isn’t very good but it will give you an idea of the tiny street and the people gathered there.

Concert, food touching, buying envelops, and IKEA excursion

Saturday evening we went to the Brahms 3rd Symphony concert in the Chiesa di San Francesca here in Umbertide. It was a 50 piece orchestra who had only played together for a couple of weeks and they were from all over the world. It was very good. The church acoustics were lovely. The 3rd movement was especially lovely.

Before the concert we tried out Inferno e Paradiso (hell and heaven) which was across the street and situated in the old vaults under the street. They served grilled meats and pizzas only. Also they specialized in beer. What we had was not good but if you stick to beer and pizza I think you would be happy enough.

Sunday we had a lovely lunch at La Chuisa. It is an agritourismo a couple of miles from Umbertide. The food was very homey and tasty. We sat on the porch. The weather was beautiful. We actually had 3 courses. We split an antipasti and we all had a pasta and a secondo which was their special braised chicken. I was amused that the chicken came on a plate with a small bowl of salad and some potatoes. Italians never let their food touch. Everything was well spaced. Susan had mentioned that she had a bunch of Italians for Thanksgiving and they all got up and got one thing at a time and ate it, then went back to get another. They were appalled that the Americans just piled everything on a plate together! Too bad, they miss that wonderful medley of mashed potatoes, dressing and turkey smothered in gravy!

Yesterday we did errands. I purchased 5 envelops. Yes 5. They sell them individually! I would have never guessed. I also got some sticky labels and fixed our doorbell which still had the wrong name on it. Also fixed our mailbox label which had Luther’s MIDDLE name on it but that didn’t bother the mailman as he still brought our mail to it. We also signed onto the Italian police website and checked our Permessi – it said they are in progress. Well I guess that’s good. I also took a picture of the cat “ladder” in the small street behind us. They built it specially so their cat could come and go to their second floor.

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Today we went to IKEA! It is on the Adriatic coast about 1 1/2 hours away. We stopped into a winery that Luther had chosen on the way. There was a beautiful old church just along the driveway – the word for country church is pieve. A stylized version of it is also the winery logo. It is not normally open but a photographer had come that day and they had opened it up so I was lucky to get some pictures. The young woman is Sylvia who did our wine tasting for us.

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Before we visited IKEA we had a wonderful lunch at Hotel Cristoforo Colombo. We had had trouble finding anywhere to eat. It was an industrial area we just happened upon this hotel. The food turned out to be great with lots of very fresh seafood. I had the Taglietelini with clams.

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I did some recon at the IKEA for future purchases but did buy a cushion, two pillows covered in linen for the couch and a cutting board which I had been sorely missing in the apartment.

Luther and wine

I forgot to mention that when we went to the wine co-op near Castiglione del Lago (the place with the wine pumps) I noticed something amusing. Luther has his Gambero Rosso or Red guide to wine. It is how he chooses where we will go to taste and buy wines. They are rated by price and quality. He picked this co-op that we visited from this book. Before we go into a winery he checks which wines got the best scores.

So we go inside and we go over to the shelves and find one of the whites he is interested in. It cost €2.63 a bottle (about $3.00). I could see he was conflicted. It just really goes against all things holy that a good wine should cost so little. I smiled at him and said “It really kills you to buy wine this cheap doesn’t it?” And he admitted that it was true! But we did buy a half a case. And you know what? It is really good!! Just goes to show that you can’t judge that a wine is good just because it costs more.

We did a bit of exploring yesterday. We visited a few towns we had not been to before. Chuisi, Citta di Pieve and Ficulle. We had lunch in the last place. Here are a few pictures. The first two are of Chuisi.

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These two are at the restaurant where we had lunch. These nice Italians were so cute and loved that I took their picture. I will say one thing about Italians that we meet, they usually ask if we are English and when we tell them we are Americans their faces really light right up! They like Americans!

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Catching up

There hasn’t been too much happening. Just odds and ends that I’ll catch up on.

We spent a couple of quiet days. We caught up over lunch with Susan and Gary who had been in the Dolomite mountains in the Alto Adige part of Italy. It used to be Austria before the first world war. They still speak primarily German and it is Germanic in feel. We have been several times. It was not their cuppa tea! Also they had a lot of rain which was unfortunate.

We met with Emanuele and he “says” he is all set to start work on Sunday. I am excited but not holding my breath. He also brought us a letter from Fed Ex.

This was our next challenge. We had arranged for Luther to get his prescriptions sent to our Texas mailbox. They showed up last Friday. I arranged for them to be sent to Emanuele’s address as someone is always there. The letter he brought was from FedEx regarding customs who want to know exactly what is in this package. We had been expecting this. They emailed us a bunch of forms and we filled them out. We had to go to the bank to arrange to pay the €40.00 they charge. We could have gone to our bank website to do this but the site was down. We only had 3 days to get the funds there so opted to go in person to the bank.

SO we sent the money and filled out the forms and sent them all back. We hope this will allow the medicine to be delivered. This whole thing is costing a good bit of money. First the prescriptions cost around $30.00. Not bad. Then it cost $56.00 to sent them via FedEx. This was the least expensive method that was trackable. Add to that the €40.00 (about $52.00). At least we only have to do this every 3 months. Once we are registered here we can get the Italian health insurance. That will be a WHOLE other experience!

So we congratulated ourselves with a trip to the restaurant across the river today with a nice lunch all’aperto. As an added little factoid – in Italy never ask to dine al fresco as we do in the US. This means literally “in the cooler” or in jail!! HA HA!

We have two upcoming events. One is a tour of Umbertide Underground! It is through the wine club and is next Tuesday afternoon. Apparently Umbertide is honeycombed with tunnels, catacombs, old wells and cantine. We will get a guided tour and tour La Rocca which is the big castle built into the town walls.

The other is a concert in the Chiesa de San Francesco on Saturday evening at 7PM. The church was built between the 8th and 12th centuries. The concert will be a 50 piece orchestra playing Brahms. I am quite excited to see this.