The Pumpkin, Pizza and Perugia

May 14, 2010

It was raining again.  But we were in Italy and there was so much to see and do that a little rain could hardly be a deterrent.  Anna didn’t need the car so we had it at our disposal.  We followed Janice and her girls on the freeway back to Perugia where they were returning their rental car and taking the train back to Rome to catch their respective flights.  We waved vigorously as we veered off on an earlier exit.  The kids were sad to see the Taylors go.   

My girls were also a little bit sad to see The Pumpkin go, but remarked that “at least every bright orange car for the rest of our trip is going to remind us of the Taylors.”  So true.  After a few minutes of melancholy silence, we became distracted by our pressing need to focus on finding our destination.  After only one or two wrong turns, we successfully found and parked in a tourist-friendly-looking parking garage where we locked the car, prepared our umbrellas, and started walking.

Italy is divided into 20 regions.  Perugia is the capital city of the Umbrian region (next to Tuscany) in central Italy.  Although we had arrived in the city by train six days earlier, we had really only seen the train station, the McDonalds, and the exits to the highway.  Anna had mentioned some escalators, so we followed signs from the parking garage up a couple sets of escalators and were surprised to find ourselves in a maze of very old underground tunnels.  Apparently the tunnels were once the medieval quarter of a 16^th century fortress, and are now integrated into Perugia’s daily commuting life as people walk through the tunnels to get to different parts of the city center.  It was unexpected and a bit exciting, to be honest, with low lighting, dank and ancient stone walls and floors, and a complete lack of helpful signage for directionally-challenged American tourists.  


When we came to a fork in the tunnel, everyone else around us seemed to know where to go, but we just stood for a moment of confused bewilderment.  I’d long since lost any inhibitions about asking strangers for directions, but in this case it seemed that asking for help would take away from the adventure.  Besides, as the Cheshire Cat tells Alice in Wonderland, if you don’t know where you want to go, it really doesn’t matter which path you take.  So we just picked one and followed the medieval underground cobbled stones and twisting corridors, and ducked into some random rooms here and there simply for curiosity’s sake.  And when we figured out that we didn’t really want to be wherever it was that we ended up, we turned around and went back the other way until we were finally deposited at the main street, Corso Vanucci. 

There were vendors on the street selling jewelry and miscellaneous wares, and the kids waited patiently for me while I tried on a few custom-made rings.  We roamed around the charming streets and got our bearings, found a Perugia patch for Cade, and then followed a lunch crowd trail of pizza-wedge-wielding students until we discovered their side street source and we bought our own delicious slices to go.  (And didn’t get far before we turned back for a second round of slices—yum!)  

The recorded history of the city dates back to 300 BC or so, and we paid a somewhat pricey 8 Euros for the privilege of looking down into an old Etruscan well dating from the 1^st or 2^nd century BC, which for centuries was the city’s central source of water.   

Perugia produced some famous artists, including Renaissance great Raphael and his teacher Pietro Vannucci (nicknamed Perugino).  We sat in a curtained-off viewing room in a 14th century church and tried our best to adequately appreciate the fresco Raphael painted there sometime between 1505 and 1508.  There was a young man sitting in the room when we arrived, and he seemed completely absorbed in his study of the art.  I almost regretted interrupting his trance with our arrival, and we tried our best to follow his example of somber and silent meditation.  The kids were done after a minute or two, but I made them sit for a full five since we had paid good money to get past the curtain and it seemed that Raphael merited more than a "glance and go."  As we left, we said "Ciao" to the chatty Italian woman manning the desk on the other side of the curtain and went back out to face the chilly drizzly day.

As we made our way back through the city streets, I caught a glimpse of an open air market that seemed somewhat off the beaten path.  My irresistible quest for fabulous shopping finds pulled us through an alleyway to discover dozens of covered stalls draped in scarves, apparel, accessories and other wares.  The detour paid off.  Although the shopping itself was unfruitful, our wanderings inadvertently landed us at a gorgeous spot overlooking the Tiber river and pure Italian gorgeousness as far as the eye could see.   Bellissimo!