Day 7 Tuesday June 10th 2008

How do you get out of this city?
We woke up to a foggy, but beautiful morning. We left at 7:30 and headed for Spoleto.
In Spoleto we walked around for a few hours; it is a beautiful old city with a great castle on the hill. The intricate stonework on the paths and the buildings were designed beautifully. We were walking and found an open-air market. They had a whole bin of zucchini blossoms. The guy who grew everything also had wild asparagus that is supposed to be excellent in this region. The onions were beautiful and so long. The swiss chard was as long as my forearm. He was selling tons of fava beans. They must be in season. He gave us a taste of his peas and I like the US ones better, they are much sweeter. The rosemary stalks were as thick as my pinky they looked so good. He had something wrapped up in newspaper and we couldn’t figure out what is it was, but it ended up being eggs. He even makes his own olive oil, and he showed us that.

We decided to buy some wild asparagus, agretti, and some chicory from the market stand. The guy was really old and his hands and fingertips were very cracked. The cherries were really beautifully displayed at the market, and they were seriously some of the best I have ever tasted. At the market, we saw our first real fresh truffle sighting. 250 Euros a kilo which is like $400 dollars U.S. We also had our first real catholic priest sighting. You don’t see many of those these days.

For breakfast, we got lemon, chocolate, and ham & cheese crepes. Brit got a doughnut, but it wasn’t anything special he said.

We walked around the city, and saw lots of fun shops. The cheese shop had fresh mounds of ricotta salatta that were huge. I went into the salumeria, some old nasty guy tried to kiss me and feel me up… yuck! I definitely didn’t want his salami. We decided to hike up to the castle, but after we got there, we didn’t want to pay 12 euros per person to go in the castle and up in the tower so we just strolled around town, and looked at the view that way.

I saw a lady setting up an awesome painting apparatus it was mounted to a collapsible tripod. I bet she is painting all across Europe. That would be so fun; too bad I’m not patient enough to paint. The view was incredible we savored that, as much as you can with 12 people, and then decided to go to the agriculture farm. We thought the kids would like the farm more than the castle anyway.

We couldn’t get out of town, for some reason Brit kept missing the turn and we kept circling the city. Brit decided to try the road up by the castle and so we took that. It went on the other side of town, but we obviously missed that sign that designated it was a walking path only. So here we are two cars and everyone looking at us like we are crazy. After we got to the end, it was too late and just left our cars and went to walk across this cool bridge.

As we left there were a bunch of ladies that were giving us evil looks. One even said in very broken English “no parking”. Brit was very spry and said “bon jour” and spoke the only French he knew, so they wouldn’t think we were dumb Americans. He told everyone bonjour as he drove back us out of town.

Poppies are in full bloom right now. And the fields are white, already to harvest. Poppies are everywhere, but especially amongst the wheat fields. Pictures became an issue today. Everything that my mom sees is the “most beautiful thing I ever saw”, so she is having Brit stop everywhere which frustrates him, since first of all it is hard to drive here, second, Brit wants to get to his destination, third, how can everything be the most beautiful, and fourth, how many pictures of poppy fields do I have to stop for and still be a good son-in-law, I’m sure he wonders? He is very patient satisfying her and my desires, but 6 days of this might do him in.

So after our hike in Spoleto, we went to find the agritourism place, “Antico Castagno”. It was a beautiful drive up the mountain to a very isolated small town. We had clutch problems. Brit for some reason has a hard time driving a stick, which I have known most of our married life. But when he gets frustrated it makes me laugh even harder. It is a pride devastator and every time he pops the clutch and we stall I laugh.

We ended up not being able to find the farm, but we found lots of other cool everyday things. Wash lines, cemeteries, dogs that hunt truffles. We lost Josh & Hiedi at this point since we were all lost and didn’t stay together well. We tried to go to different agritourism place to eat lunch, hoping Josh would get our text of the change of plans, since our lunch location was still 1.5 hours away.

We went to Sant’Anatolia di Narco to a farm called La Vaie in the hills. Well we tried to at least. We went to a different town first and had to ask how to get there. The address programmed into the GPS was wrong. We had to go over to the “yellow mountain” and it would be up there somewhere. But after looking for the last one, we thought it might be another needle in the haystack. One of the problems with the GPS is unless you’ve been there before and pinpointed it yourself, it is usually not precisely accurate, which leads to a frustrated driver.

We finally got there and the kids were rewarded with a great variety of animals. The famous black pigs from this area, cows, turkeys, pigeons, chickens, bing cherries, and even a bocce court to play with. They had fun chasing the chicken, petting the cows and such. There were huge cherry trees with a large crop ready for picking.

You could tell they only ate what they grew at that farm. The grandmother was out shucking fava beans, and then they fed those pods to the cows. They have a restaurant that you can eat at even if you aren’t staying at that home, but it is closed on Tuesday’s and of course, that’s today. So we got out our Garmin language guide and asked the lady, “where a good restaurant was?” Her husband read it and said we were eating here!

I felt bad for the lady, but it did seem like she really want to cook for us. Brit played with the kids while we waited for everything to get ready. The food was okay, but nothing to right home about, another Caputo’s recommendation that was blah. However, the pizza bianco, from the al forno was good and so was the pork, it had such a rich almost chickeny flavor.

There were huge amaryillis bulbs growing outside, along with the rest of their food. Everything was so neat and tidy, even the woodpile was so neatly stacked. After eating we headed for Scheggiano, we were just going there to see the city and it was pretty. It was very small, but had a stream running down the middle of it filled with trout, and many signs saying “no fishing”. We had gelato there. The favorites were the fior di latte and the bosco berry one. We always like lemon. It has such a clean refreshing flavor. Brit & I told Braeton that everytime the clock rings you get to buy another gelato if you are finished with your last one. Luckily, we left before the bell struck again.

We drove through the mountains. It was so beautiful. We went to a little town called Monteleone di Spoleto. It was way back in very secluded pristine valley. You couldn’t have asked for a better day. The temperature and the weather were perfect. We drove around absorbing the views and the breathtaking scenery. We took lots of pictures.

We drove to a remote farm called “Colle Del Capitano”. This was obviously a free-range animal farm. Not sure if we should get out of our car, due to the fact there was a 300+ lbs. pig just right next to where we should park, we were leery so we watched our surrounding closely. Unfortunately the kids were asleep. This farm was so cool. None of the animals were scared or ran away. We went and talked to the lady, and she said we could wander anywhere just like the animals. The pigs captured Brit & my Dad’s attention. They went to pet them… Watch the video to see more.

While we were watching the chickens, I got some great pictures of them, and Brit was pretending to drive the tractor the shepherd came back with all his sheep it was so beautiful. You felt like you were in the middle of the Sound of Music or something. They had even shaved some of their sheep so they had a mowhawks. There were goats and huge white Newfoundland type dogs.

You can rent the apartment there for only $55 Euros and they had kitchens were so nice and brand new. It was so cool and a great place to stay. Mom of course doesn’t eat pork, but she bent down and ate some weeds, but then Brit said teasing her “what’s the difference between eating those and the pigs. I’m sure have peed on the weeds that you just ate, and you didn’t even wash them.”

While we were so high up in the mountains we found a tartufi forest. Of course there were signs that said no trespassing, but of course that doesn’t stop our family. So we went hunting for truffles. The steps were so cool going up there and the roots of the trees were so snarled after being picked under for truffles for years. The roots are actually exposed and look very strange. It was so amazing to be in this forest. Since Josh wasn’t with us when we got home we showed him the pictures of us going on the truffle hunt and photoshoped the Shepard guy to be the truffle hunter and took pictures of the dogs that were on the side of the road and acted like they hunted the truffles. We weren’t sure if he bought it or not.

We drove through Cascia and on to Norcia. We stopped at Norcia so the kids could get out and run around. We bought salami, lentils and cheese here. Some of the proscuitto legs still even had fur on them. Some of the truffles were as large as my hand. The pancetta tesa di cinghiale looked so rustic and delicious. I saw some cool old doors I would live to make for my pool area.

The city of Norcia was the perfect place to rest and walk. There were already kids, playing soccer in the square. There were fun lion statues to climb on and the city was very clean and beautiful. We were going to eat dinner here but then realized the town was the wrong one. So we got back in the car and started driving. We were glad we did because we got some beautiful pictures. There were some old cities in the hills that were in total ruin. The sun was shinning so beautifully on certain spots. The town of Preci at the right time gave me some incredible pictures too.

So we decided to drive to Preci while it was still light because that would be a shorter, safer route home. It was supposed to be a place where three valleys intersected. It did not disappoint. By this time a bunch of us needed to go to the bathroom, which always seems to be the problem anywhere in Europe.

We drove back and forth on this road trying to find the restaurant but to no avail. Then we thought we finally found it, unpacked all the kids and when to go to it, but it was the wrong one. We were all frustrated, especially the driver. I call him the autorista now, which means chauffer.

We were well rewarded at the restaurant called Il Castoro. The food was so good, especially the gnocchi and pizza. The ravioli was delightful. We ate until we were stuffed. Braeton took pictures of Nanna at the table. He is really funny. Dad and Mom slept as soon as they got in the car. It was a long drive home, and I stayed awake, trying to keep Brit from falling asleep.