Izzalini, Umbria, Italy. As we stretch our visits to this incredible country a bit further, we find ourselves in this new region to us, Umbria. Umbria is right next to Tuscany and they say it is like Tuscany but like it was 20 years ago, so much quieter. We heard that Tuscany is so well marketed that most people travel there, shame when you have this gem right door. Umbria has many incredibly beautiful hilltop towns that it will impossible for us to see them all during this one week visit. We will do our best, given our time and energy.
Just to catch you up, we flew, for the first time, Air France, from Vancouver to Paris - premium economy. Wow, what a great flight (will probably do that again, so easy now to fly direct to Paris). The bonus for us was that we had to book two aisle seats, one in front of the other, apparently the couple that booked the windows, also booked one in front of each other - a bit rude if you ask me. Well for some reason they were no shows, ha, Jan and I both moved to the windows and entire sections to ourselves - talk about comfort.
Great easy connection from Paris to Rome (2 hour flight), took us almost that long to find the car rental place (Terminal 3 for those playing at home) and wait in line to get brand spanking New Lancia - compact and nice. Using my GPS from home (with downloaded maps of Italy) and two hours later we arrived at our villa just in time as they closed at 7. At first I was a bit nervous about driving here once again, you know the feeling of a foreign car in a somewhat foreign land, we have driven here a few times before and I was not looking forward to the panic and distress of not having a detailed enough map and frustration trying to find places of interest. I will say the GPS is a god send, even at times where it does take you on the shortest route, even when it doesn't quite make sense or doesn't know that a road is closed for repairs but overall finding our hotel (in this case Castle) was wonderful. Just follow the blue line and enjoy the scenery. Sarah made check in a breeze and after we settled in we had dinner next door at the restaurant and basically crashed after very limited sleep over the past 24 hours, still about midnight local time here before lights out.
Up at about 9, slowly got the lay of the land, unpacking etc. then off exploring set the GPS for the long way to the hilltop village of Orvieto, simply beautiful. Great walk about including a visit to a 14th Duomo, Le meraviglie del Duomo Di Orvieto. Lunch at a wine tasting restaurant then picked up a few more supplies then set the GPS for a shorter route home - gotta say, love having the GPS. Jan made us a fabulous ravioli dinner and now time to hit the sheets, so a quick, or not so quick upload. Hope you enjoy, maybe in two parts due to Internet, which at best here is so far okay…more exploring tomorrow…
No comments:
Post a Comment