
i've returned from umbria. sort of. got in yesterday.
our internet was spotty and i was completely unplugged for the last few days. kept my ipad in airplane mode so the borrowed book on my kindle wouldn't be zapped away by the library.
so begins my lengthy travel log of our spoleto adventure. we arrived in the late evening. catching the train from rome was easy and the only mishap along the way was when i collided with a handsome carabinieri with a big gun at the rome airport. ran smack into him. mesmerized i suppose by his big gun. or the long flight.

um i also nearly fell off the train at the tiburtina station and crash landed into 3 nice italian ladies who were not carrying guns. that's what happens when you're sitting in an elevated seat and step into the aisle and miss the actual step. oops. but the nice ladies righted me and i was good to go. no further problems developed until the next day when i locked myself inside of a cafe bathroom. but please, let's not dwell on anymore bull-in-the-chinashop scenarios.
the next day we woke to picture-perfect weather. temperatures hovered around 58 degrees. we began what would be a daily stroll into town. the farmhouse sits high above spoleto on a wooded hillside. to reach the ponte delle torri foot bridge into town we first walked down a wooded trail.

this was our first glimpse at the bridge which is built on the remains of an ancient roman aqueduct. we paused here in the woods to admire the view. unfortunately we were so busy admiring our surroundings that we didn't take note of which trail we were on.

later on our way back home we got lost and ended up hiking uphill on a rocky rugged path about an hour north of where we should have turned to get home. it was an exhausting mistake that we only made once!

as soon as we descended into spoleto i could see that we'd chosen our umbrian hideaway wisely. it is not a tourist hub. the tourists that we did see were mostly italian, although we did overhear a few from the UK. and heard american english spoken once. i personally love it when i'm not surrounded by other english speakers when i travel. 
it would have been helpful if we had spoken more italian, but as usual we got by with a good italian/english dictionary and lots of gesturing. the shopkeepers were friendly and eager to assist us in our translations.

there are views in every direction that you look.

and narrow lanes twisting this way and that.

flowers and vines grew out of walls and tumbled over window boxes.

thick twisted wisteria vines rambled up walls and climbed up balconies and pergolas.

the farmhouse we rented was right out of the pages of a storybook. the hottub didn't work which was a disappointment, but we quickly got over it. the views were splendid and the house was really special.
here's one of many views from the property high above spoleto.

i studied the movement of the sunbeams and cloud shadows on the land. this is the view from the living room windows.

green fields and groves as far as the eye could see. green green green.

rain clouds gathered then retreated. over and over.

i hung out the window eager to see what would happen next.

which way the sunlit clouds would blow.

and also there was wine.

and food.

in this case a small mound of strangozzi alla spoletina. it's a simple rustic dish and if you want to recreate it at home HERE is a recipe i found in food & wine magazine.

a delectable plate of black pork - tender pork in an onion, red wine sauce.

more to come tomorrow!