Away to Umbria!
I’ve been in Italy for two weeks!
I feel like I’ve done so much in the past couple weeks, but at the same time it feels like I just got here. Over the past weekend, the school planned a trip to the Italian region of Umbria. All 200 students got on buses and we traveled to five smaller towns. Even the views during the bus ride were gorgeous! There are so many more hills here than in the Midwest at home. I was also surprised to see that there were so many towns even in rural areas. After a couple hours bus ride there were still a lot of buildings and towns dotting the landscape everywhere.
The first stop we made was in the town of Todi. It was on a hillside and we took a small shuttle up the side of the hill to get to the city. We went on a tour of the city and went in a church (the first of many I saw on this trip). After a short amount of free time, we were on the bus again traveling to Spoleto. This was where our hotel was located. At first our hotel seemed to be on the outskirts of a very quiet, small town; but when we walked about 20 minutes down the hill there were a lot more people and shops. I was really surprised that a short walk could reveal such different surroundings!
On Saturday, we went to Gubbio during the day. As in all the towns we visited, we went on a tour of the city. The tour in Gubbio was my favorite though, because the guide spoke a lot about when the buildings were built and how to identify the different time periods. There were a lot of buildings that were built during medieval times. These dwellings were mostly small towers that were a couple stories tall. I didn’t expect multiple- level buildings to be so common. The guide also showed us a feature of these buildings called “death doors”. These doors were originally used for funerals but later became useful for security because they were located a couple feet off the ground. Because of this, people used movable staircases (basically stepladders) to enter these houses. That night, we made a quick stop in Foligno to see how olive oil is made and got back on the bus once again to go back to the hotel in Spoleto.
Finally on Sunday we went to Perugia. There were a lot of cool shops and the views from the center of town were really beautiful. I even went to the Perugina store and got some of the famous Baci chocolates. They were pretty melted by the time we got back to Rome since we had been outside and on a warm bus all day but they were still pretty tasty.
Overall the weekend was fun. There were a lot of tours and we didn’t get much free time, but it was cool to go to some small towns that I wouldn’t have to gone myself. Although its only week 2, I’m already pretty busy with school during the week. I’m excited for this weekend though; since it’s the first time I’ve had a weekend to do whatever I want in Rome!