Executive Summary - Perugia

• A quiet 3 days at an Umbrian farmhouse just outside of Perugia

• There are worse places to have a sore throat than the land of minestrone & gelati

• Don't tell mom I 'hitch-hiked' twice in 2 days...or at least I've been assured that's what it was.

• The opportunity to make my own food! With vegetables!

I stayed at a farmhouse just outside of Perugia for 3 days in between Rome and Florence. It was an idyllic setting - and a hostel - and a great place to just relax after a week in Rome. When I arrived I was so excited to see a kitchen that I walked to the grocery store and started buying things, not having a great plan as to what I would do with the eggplant, zucchini, porcini mushroom, white anchovy, and prosciutto. I even managed to order from the deli counter (my sentences now started with 'Buongiorno, no parlo italiano!'). I cooked up a pasta sauce and also had fresh white anchovy on bread for a snack...mmm.

The pasta sauce had an extra day to sit, however, because it turned out there were a couple people at the hostel driving to a nearby lake for dinner and they had room. The hostel owners, Manuele and Laura (who was American), came as well so we had a group of 7 of us driving to a place 20-30 kms away for dinner. In the one car, Manuele and Laura with the 2 Australian girls Sara and Lisa, and in the other car I was with David, an Italian bloke staying at the hostel, and Stephen, a very very weird kid from NJ who chewed with his mouth open. David, being Italian, decided to take over ordering for me, which I was happy for it to occur, so he ordered fruitti misti and insalata fruitti (mixed fried seafood and mixed pickled seafood salad). It was definitely much better than Sara's lasagna. This night was also when I had my first grappa - distilled grape skins, basically, which can be kept in oak barrels for colour/flavour as well. Mmmmmm, helps a cold like nothing else.

We drove back to the farmhouse and David gave me his views on life and goals. Essentially from him I learned that 1) Italian women are crazy and 2) his goal was to open a bar in Amsterdam so he could display his art, which has a BDSM theme.

'kay.

The people you meet, hey...

(I saw photos of the art, and, no mystery as to what they're about I can assure you)

But it was all quite funny.

The next day I walked with Sara and Lisa to a chocolate factory tour - mmmmm Baci! Perugia is most famous for its Perugina chocolate factory, where they make Baci chocolates amongst other things. Course it's now part of the Nestle corporation but they still make bloody good chocolate. The tour lasted about an hour and we got heaps of free samples (which is really why we were there in the first place, let's face it).

On the walk back, which was about a 30 minute stroll, the wind picked up and dark, dark storm clouds gathered. I half expected to see a tornado in the distance. The thing about walking with 2 younger girls is that they tend to get noticed, so every few minutes a car or truck would honk their horn and pull over to offer us a ride. Finally the rain started and Sara and Lisa started across the street to a car that was pulled over.

...welllllll...ok then...

This is how I came to catch a ride with Fausto the Smoking Umbrian who spoke essentially no English. He drove us the 6 blocks to the hostel and Lisa gave him some of our free chocolate as a thank you. It was all pretty benign really, and despite not having asked for the ride Lisa and Sara assured me that it constituted hitch-hiking.

(cross another thing off the to-do list!)

That night we bought a bottle of wine from Laura and I finally had my pasta sauce (not one of my better efforts). The four of us - Lisa, Sara, Laura, and myself - played a game of I never (Never have I ever...played 'I never' after the age of 22) which was a funny way to pass the evening.

The next day the three of us went into town and walked around Perugia. I had lunch by myself on the piazza as the other two wandered - being in Umbria, the land of truffles, I could not leave without tagliatelle al tartufo! So I had that as well as insalataradicchio, pecorino e noci - so good!

Sara and I went to a wine tasting at Goretti vineyards, near the farmhouse, after exploring the town. We had to walk from the bus stop down a country road for about 1-2 kms to get to the cellar door. Yet again it started raining and we were still a ways from the vineyard. This time an old man in a mercedes pulls over ...okie doke, I'm a pro at this pseudo-hitch-hiking caper by now. Turns out it's Mr Goretti of the Goretti family vineyards. Doesn't speak a word of English but I do interpret his Italian as 'what are you silly girls doing! It's raining!' from my 5 years of French.

I didn't have high expectations for the wine tasting, since it seemed a bit cobbled together and touristy in the organisation of it. But - wow - I take all those thoughts back. We were given a presentation of the wine range they produce in the showroom first. In the meantime, Mr Goretti is back by these petrol pump-like things and the locals kept coming in with their large glass or plastic jugs. Sure enough he'd fill them up from the petrol pumps with vino rosso or vino bianco or vino gorchetti.

Sarah Goretti gave us the wine tasting presentation itself in this old cellar. We tried about 5 or 6 wines in total, including a gorchetti (white) and their speciality reds. This was the first time, as well, that I had tried a vin santo with the biscotti dipped in it. Mmmm!

That night I turned my leftover pasta sauce into a soup and it was much, much better. I was concerned my body might go into shock from having vegetables 2 nights in a row, but it seemed to cope ok.