Month: September 2021

We had no power, so we went out for coffee. And to look for castles, run an errand, and eat lunch.

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It was awfully nice of the power company to warn us of upcoming work and an outage this time. Power outages here in the country are usually of the unplanned kind. The last time it went out, we got back home to a dark house, and a phone call to report the problem let me know that they were working on it and we’d be back online in a few hours. This time, for planned work, the power company posted notices up and down the road and stuffed our mailbox with one.

So we woke up early enough to use the espresso machine and to make sure our devices were charged. We sat around wondering if they really were going to cut the juice at 8:30 because it was a rainy morning. And at 8:32 the music stopped and the wifi cut out. We started to read novels but after awhile thought instead of waiting around, we’d go check out the borgos in the area that we always see from the road and say “we’ll have to check out XX one of these days.” Finally, it was one of those days.

If you’re new to this blog, a brief explanation. This region is called the mystical heart of Italy for a good reason. It’s densely wooded, hilly and mountainous, depending on where you are, and it’s dotted with castles, both adapted for modern use or abandoned, lonely testaments to the days of chivalry and bloody battles between city-states.

But first up was coffee. We had some at home, but we needed booster shots. And we had all the time in the world. We have a bunch to choose from and this morning we went to the next town, which has a sweet bar with lots of outdoor seating—perfect for a pandemic. Unlike bars (cafes in the U.S.) in touristy areas, in these local spots you don’t pay extra to hang around. Sure, you can grab a quick one standing at the bar, but in this area you tell the barista what you want and bring it to a couch or table and hang out until you need to go. First stop, then, was the Bar Dolce Vita in Pianello, behind a gas station. So what if it’s not romantically located? Good coffee, terrific outdoor seating, friendly baristas—it’s a genuine neighborhood hangout.

The first borgo on the list was Castel d’Arno (apologies for the outdate and weird-looking website). It’s a hamlet that’s part of Perugia and is up a narrow winding road. Yeah, you can describe most of the roads around here that way. We saw some workmen, and a guy supervising their work told us he rented out apartments in the hamlet. He told us to walk under an arch to an overlook and wow, even on a day full of threatening clouds and mists, the view was pretty fantastic.

It was raining down there, but not at Castel d’Arno.

Next up? Sterpetto, another tiny borgo, this time part of neighboring Assisi. Sterpetto is bigger than Castel d’Arno and looked in better shape. In general, Assisi seems to maintain its outlying hamlets better than Perugia, whose “frazioni” often seem to suffer in favor of the jewel-like historic center. Sterpetto has a working church and buildings that people actually live in. Its site is comparable in that wow factor, but Sterpetto just feels less like the 21st century has passed it by. Our gardener told me a funny story involving the borgo. A local businessman, a big man in every way, decided he’d lose weight by walking from the neighboring Pianello up the hill to Sterpetto and back. Sounds like a plan, right? Problem is, a guy works up an appetite on a long walk like that, and this man ate a couple of pizzas on the way back. Pizzas in Italy are individually sized, but still….

Would The New York Times call Sterpeto “tidy and well-kept”?
New desk lamp, meet old worry beads.

Speaking of the 21st Century, we next dropped into it by stopping at the megastore Leroy Merlin. It’s a French chain of big box stores that’s sort of like Lowe’s or Home Depot. Only L-M, or as The Spartan Woman pronounces it, “Lee-Roy,” is more stylish. With time to waste until pranzo (lunch), we looked at the light fixtures—I needed a new desklamp—and the tiles. We picked up some strong brackets to hang an amazing poster a friend sent us of the Spolete “Due Mondi” music festival, and took mental notes for a not-happening bathroom renovation.

Finally, lunch. We figured we still had some time to waste before the juice came on. We debated most of the morning off and on where to go. We could have gone north, back to our area to, perhaps, Il Panaro near Gubbio. Terrific torta al testo and rootsy homemade food. But there’s a strange waiter who may or may not pretend that he doesn’t understand our order and who once offended a diminutive but not too small friend of our kid’s by giving her a tiny wine glass.

We were almost in Assisi anyway. We normally avoid the place during the day, especially in summer, because it’s crawling with tourists and pilgrims and nuns and monks and souvenir vendors and….you get the idea. But on the off season and at night, it’s just a really pretty hilltown. The Spartan Woman remembered having really good stringozzi cacio e pepe at a restaurant right on the main piazza, the Taverna dei Consoli, which sounded good to me. We had equally decadent antipasti, little onion tartlets with a creamy truffle sauce for me, and a fonduta of pecorino and truffle for her. We spent a bit more than we normally would for an impromptu lunch, but it was worth it. Besides, we took the really long way back to the car, so we worked it off.

Even better, the lights came on an hour before they promised.

Image up top: the piazza outside the Basilica di San Francesco in Assisi, as seen from above and in black & white

Somehow we’ve managed to fill the void of having fewer guests this summer

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We have a new guest this week, someone from the neighborhood. Or so it seems—it’s a horse, apparently a mare. She’s super skinny and she’s ravenous. This is good for one thing; it means I don’t have to mow the lawn which, after a heatwave and drought-induced slumber, is suddenly alive, green and growing. But it means occasionally dealing with the digestive results of her buffet. I just texted a neighbor who might know who her humans may be. [UPDATE: She belongs to our neighbors, who came by to encourage her to go home. She apparently likes our grass better.]

Howdy, neighbor!

Such is life in the Umbrian countryside. People ask me “what do you do all day?” Sometimes I ask myself the same question. But these few months have gone by way too quickly, and part of the reason is probably that it’s never dull around here, even without the parade of guests we’ve had in pre-Covid summers.

I mentioned a neighbor. Our house was part of a working farm that takes in guests. The owners sold us this house and almost two acres of their land. The business is called an agriturismo, and this one specifically is named Ca’Mazzetto. It’s certified organic and it produces olive oil and wool from a flock of about 125 Sardinian sheep.

Ca’Mazzetto also produces interesting people. One of them is Joonas Sotgia, a young guy about the age of our younger daughter. Joonas is half Finn and half Italian, though to look and listen to him he’s 100 percent Italian; his mother is from northern Finland. He got back about a week ago from Afghanistan, where he was working for the Italian NGO Emergency in the southern city of Lashkargah. Joonas isn’t a doctor, he took care of logistics and hiring of the nonmedical staff at the group’s hospital there.

Joonas relaxes with a drink the Taliban don’t approve of.

I did a formal interview with him the other day, which I’ll release soon. But that evening we sat out in the yard and updated each other about our lives; it’s been two years since he, The Spartan Woman, and I were in the same place. We talked about how we handled this pandemic, his last job in Slovakia for Amazon (key takeaway—he won’t buy from them, ever), and how the Taliban left the Italians alone, and when they came into the hospital they left their guns at the gate.

We don’t just sit around and talk. Like I’ve written before, The Spartan Woman and I walk. We walk up and down hills, we follow trails, rutted roadways, cow paths up mountains, etc. We continue to do it; doing so is part of The Spartan Woman’s boot camp for the nearly elderly. This is contagious, and we’ve taken to judge our guests by whether they like to hike with us or not.

For example, an America friend from our Staten Island neighborhood stayed with us for a bit. TSW and she do take walks through Staten Island’s Botanical Gardens at Snug Harbor. But those are level and not that long. Wendy (the friend) was craving escape and Italy, but when we told her about our morning routine, she said she’ll stay by the pool and read a book and let us have all the fun. Fat chance. She was addicted the first time up the road. Maybe it’s the vistas. Maybe the neighborhood dogs, which are impossibly cute and impossibly addicted to the biscuits we give them. By the end of her stay, Wendy was charging up hillsides and goading us to walk further. Now back in the U.S., she’s, um, strongly encouraging her husband to get vertical and move.

TSW and Wendy enjoy a break in Spello from climbing up steep hills.

So if you visit us, you’ve been warned.

We tried to find good places for Wendy to practice her new favorite hobby. We drove around the region, keeping in mind that because of Covid-19 we didn’t want to hang around with too many people. So we drove up into the Valnerina to visit one of our favorite places, the Piano Grande di Castelluccio, and on the way back we stopped to eat in Norcia, the gastronomical capital of Umbria. While we had a terrific lunch, it was heartbreaing to see that much of the town is still in ruins as a result of the devastating earthquakes of 2016.

What’s left of Norcia’s duomo.

What else? Gelato! Okay, I’ve been eating the stuff since I was a kid. It’s different from American ice cream in being made mostly from milk rather than cream. Plus it’s less aerated and the flavors are more intense, possibly because it’s servied a bit warmer than ice cream.

We’ve got our spots in the big cities. Well, okay, in Perugia (population about 170,000). And it’s terrific. But our friend Angelo pointed us to the Oxy Bar in the hamlet of Palazzo di Assisi, and we’re hooked. Great flavors, terrific service—all the standard stuff is terrific. What Oxy adds is its location. It’s right in the center of the small town, across the street from a castle that’s become a warren of restaurants and apartments.Oxy is next door to the town’s church, which conveniently has lots of places in front to perch.

If it’s a summer night, it’s time for a gelato.

There’s nothing quite like a summer night in Italy when the gelateria is one of the only games in town. The older folks sit at the tables in front, while everyone else is either standing in groups, walking around saying hello, or finding a spot in front of the church to hang out. You hear that flowing babble that characterizes the Umbrian accent when you’re not paying attention to what people are saying. And everyone’s united in the easy pleasure of a sweet treat on a summer night.

I’d be negligent not to mention the trattoria across the street from Oxy, Not the hipster-vibed “Gnocco e gin” place in the castle, but the friendly, family run Osteria del Cambio. Food like it serves up would be an expensive night out in New York, but here it’s mom’s home cooking. Or grandma’s. It’s Angelo’s favorite hangout, and he calls it by the proprietor’s name, Catia. When I came alone last year, Angelo and I had lunch once a week there. TSW, Angelo, and I recently had dinner at Catia’s and we didn’t hold back–antipasti, tagliatelle with black truffles, a “secondo,” wine and coffee, and the damage was all of €48, or about $56. You might get a pizza and a couple of drinks for that at Ribalta in New York.

For best results, combine Catia’s and Oxy.

We’re heading into autumn now. The weather’s changing, alternating between brilliant dry days and cloudy changeable ones. It’s time to close the pool, wear long pants when we go into the city, and to think of more ambitious hikes. Our aim is to tackle the uphill path to Assisi with a reward at the end in town: a decadent lunch.