After a marathon of ferries, we still had trips on a train and city bus to reach our final destination. We found a farmhouse outside the city of Perugia that is now a hostel. The place is super nice and has great views of the rolling hills. They have decided to maintain a little of the farm atmosphere, complete with a few horses, geese, ducks, chickens, a dog, and of course you can’t keep the farm cats away. These cats were huge, we wondered if one of them was half bobcat.

A little breakfast was provided, but we found ourselves with a kitchen yet again. Finding good food in Italy isn’t hard, but cooking with Italian food is even better. We were still within walking distance of a village market and a butcher. The pancetta and mozzarella are the best we’ve had! In addition, the hostel was located a good 45 minute walk from a winery. One of our projects for a day was walking to and from and getting a tour and tasting. The winery has one token man who speaks English, but we were able to piece together some information from the Italian owner/grandmother during our tasting.

We also spent a little time in the old part of the town perched atop a hill. The city has a mini-metro, only one tiny car, that brings you up the hill. A couple of escalators are there to ease the steep climb up as well. While we were in the city we had Italian specialties like pizza and espresso:) After criss-crossing the small old town we returned to the farmhouse for another home cooked meal.

We had planned on spending a few days in Rome before our flight out, but hadn’t quite realized that we were looking for accommodation at the last minute for a Friday, Saturday, Sunday. Not surprisingly we were having a difficult time finding places and decided that Rome was full for the weekend. There are plenty of other great places to visit in Italy, and we turned our attention to Florence instead.

Despite it being Heritage Weekend and some sort of run/walk event taking place in the city, we had no problem finding two beds for the next three nights. The good thing about Heritage Weekend is that all the famous stuff that usually charges admission was free, the bad part is the lines are quite long. We hung out in line for three hours before we saw David, got into the Uffizi in about an hour and walked right into the Medici’s Palace on Sunday morning. Besides the free ones, there was also a Leonardo exhibition that we had seen advertised in New Zealand, but missed the dates. The exhibition has recreations and explanations of machines that Leonardo invented or perfected and sketched about in his famous journals. We also climbed the Duomo for a birds eye view of the sprawling terracotta-topped city and surrounding countryside.

Besides seeing the sights, we ate more terrific food. We were surprised to find Belgian-style waffles, not the American version of Belgian waffles. Mike ended up ordering two with gelato sandwiched in the the middle. After visiting the church Santa Croce (Cruz in Spanish), we found a mini Oktoberfest in the square with microbreweries from all over Italy. Who knew! We also learned to order and eat like Italians, especially for breakfast. If you can’t eat a croissant and wash it down with a cappuccino standing at the bar within three minutes, you’re not a local. Since we were still in wine country we usually ordered a jug (500 ml) at least once a day. We hadn’t gotten enough, so on on our last day in town we took a wine tour of the Chianti Clasico region. It was a bus load of mostly backpacker types and was a great day despite a little rain. Apparently 2010 will be a bad year for wine in the area because it has been so cold and wet.

Immediately after our wine tour, we hopped on a train for Rome. We only had enough time to get to the train station, change trains and get to our cozy beds by 10pm to be up again for our 7am flight to Madrid.

Tags: beer · coffee · food · hostel · Italy · museum · train · wine