On the road: Umbria

Italy isn't a big country. You can drive from one side to the other in about two and a half hours. So it didn't take us long to trade Rome's crazy, narrow, city streets for countryside.

Aside from our brief taxi trips, our experience on the Roman roads has been limited to trying to cross the street and admiring the circus from the top of a bus. Then we picked up our hire car. We’ve come across a few demonstrations in Rome and they must have been the warm-up for today. It stalled our taxi on the way to the station and the traffic as we were driving out of the city. It meant no one could race about in the normal crazy fashion. Instead it took us about 25 minutes to get 3km.

Our actual destination, a guesthouse on an olive farm outside Spoleta in Umbria, was only a couple of hours, but we were in no rush so first headed to Subiaco – purely because it’s the name of one of the football grounds in Australia. It seemed as good a reason as any.

We spent most of the trip on pretty major roads until winding into the mountains before heading into some smaller villages. The villages were built into the side of mountains - no paddocks, no anything. There was little traffic and few signs of life - other than the blooming flowers in the boxes hanging from the windows. People must live here, but I have no idea what  they do all day.

It was bloody hot though - we'd chosen a good day to leave Rome, which is said to be the worst part of Italy to be when it's hot. All that stone and heavy buildings...urgh! Instead we were cruising around with air conditioning, enjoying the scenery.



As we neared Spoleta, the most major town near our guesthouse, the landscape started to change. It flattened out and we passed paddocks with sunflowers (not quite ready), oat, wheat and barley. The olive trees also appeared, but they weren't limited to the flat ground. The trees lined the mountains around it, and the houses were built up there too. They don't take up good cropping ground with buildings.

Our guesthouse was in a place called Bazzano Inferiore. Just over the hill was Bazzano Superiore. The apartment was huge and reminded me of the typical country Italian buildings I've seen in movies such as Under the Tuscan Sun. In fact the town featured that movie isn't too far from here.

The apartment was huge and open. A long timber table, huge open fireplace, large, antique bed frames. A jasmine plant covered the staircase and has an amazing scent. There was a pool up the hill, the path winding around olice trees. This was the view for our afternoon swim:





Before dinner (eated on the balcony with the sun setting) we explored Bazzano Inferiore. Unsurpringsly, there was little action in this tiny village. Even for a Saturday night.