Sicily - late March

Emilia-Romagna - early April

Tuscany, Florence - April 8

Umbria - late April

Spoleto Introduction

Spoleto, Part 2

Spoleto - Continuing Experiences

Besides the Festival of Two Worlds, Spoleto has many other things to recommend it. It is a medium-sized town of 38,000, set in the hills of Umbria, about in the center of the county (the east/west axis) and an hour and a half by train straight north of Rome. It was a Roman colony Spoletium, and located on the famous via Flaminia, the road from Rome to the port of Rimini on the north Adriatic. There are many Roman antiquities. I've already shown you the Roman theater. There's also a Roman house and many of the shops have Plexiglas "windows" in the floor of the shops to show the Roman ruins beneath them. In lots of places along the streets and walkways, later stonework has been excavated so you can see the Roman works and even where it hasn't been, the medieval by-ways of the "historical center" atop the hills are just simply charming.

Most of the town is now thoroughly Renaissance in flavor. Most famous are its fortress, La Rocca Albornoz, and the Ponte della Torre, a bridge and aqueduct. I'll tell about these later, but first, Kyle, Carol and Sam arrive in Spoleto. For a plan that had many chances of coming unglued, everything worked fine and they were on the train I expected them to be on and Lorrie was available to pick them up. And Lorrie's car is big enough to accommodate all of us at once, which many Italian cars would not be. And his might not have been if they hadn't arrived travelling admirably light. One duffle a piece and an extra backpack for the games. The big problem was that Carol had a bug and had thrown up in planes and airports if not all the way around the world, at least around a third of it. So Lorrie didn't do the mini-tour, but took us straight home where she languished for a day and a half (but made up for it later).

Sam and Kyle and I explored a bit, not too much, because our biggest problem was finding a place to stay next. They arrived on Thursday and we had to vacate our place on Sunday at 10:00 am. Kyle and I spent hours at the Internet and copy center trolling the Internet for other places in Spoleto. Norma and Lorrie have offered us a great deal on an old convent in Abrazzo, the only thing they have available, but it's four or five miles out of town and we don't particularly want to rent a car and we do want to be in the middle of things. We discovered over and over in out Internet research that Norma and Lorrie own or manage 99.9% of the self-catered rentals in town and if they say there's nothing available, there's nothing. The hotels were way too expensive for us and we couldn't find anything that even vaguely resembled a hostel. Mightily discouraged on Friday night Kyle and I say good-bye to the shop manager, sadly telling him we probably won't be back because we have no place to stay so have to move on.

"It's impossible?" he says. "Yes, we've looked and looked. " "Ah, wait." < Italian chatter, chatter, chatter to his wife Rita>. "Yes, okay, my wife knows someone with hotel, Go with her."

So Rita leads us two blocks up the street, hollers up to a flower-bedecked window, "Marcella! Marcella!" Marcella comes to the window. <Italian chatter, chatter, chatter between Marcella and Rita> Rita opens the door on Marcella's buzz, "Okay, bye-bye." And we're on our own. The entry way appears to have an antique well, some very old vases and maybe a grain grinding bowl, And some papyrus plumes (again, maybe) and old newspapers. We trudge up the stairs. Marcella looks us over and decides to show us the room.

We both know the second we walk in we have to take it. It is absolutely, totally old-world Italian. Kinda dark, kinda chilly; like a cave, the (uncorrected) temperature in these building with stone walls a foot thick seems to be the average annual ambient temperature of the surroundings. It is absolutely stuffed with gorgeous old sideboards and cabinets, sagging couches, a huge table with some chairs, ornate ash trays. We have one room with a double bed and two single beds. We try out the beds and decide that Sam has to sleep in the worst one. After two nights he complained that his left shoulder was permanently numb, but that's okay, my mattress kept slipping off whatever was underneath it (not a box spring) and I would wake up with one foot on the floor sort of bracing me in the bed and the mattress pivoting on the edge of that whatever-it-was.

All the beds were dreadful, but we had lovely little balconies with all kinds of plants over a courtyard garden and a rack for hanging clothes we washed out and two bathrooms and a window out on to the street. And maybe best of all we had a Rapunzel-style tower, the fifth story of the building, where Marcella and her daughter-in-law hang the laundry. But not every day. So Sam and I used it as a reading and writing and gazing out at the scenery retreat when Kyle and Carol were off doing something we didn't feel like doing. It was a perfect bonding experience for a 13-year-old and his grandmother. Becoming a teenager really is a big transition and you need new ways of communicating and so forth. I'm so pleased Sam and I had this chance.

Marcella's place turned out to be a bed and breakfast, with another 5 or 6 rooms, but there were other people there only on Friday and Saturday and not very many. Marcella thought it over and decided we would pay 50 euros per night, including breakfast--which is always strong coffee and some kind of sweet cake or cookie. This was the best bargain we made in Italy.

Marcella has quite the green thumb and there are plants everywhere. We had bought sick Carol a nice begonia and when we moved, hauling everything 6 blocks, we left it outside while we went back for another load, but when we got back it was gone. Several days later, we noticed it on Marcella's window sill. We were going to give it to her anyway, just not quite that soon.

Marcella herself is just a perfect older Italian lady and we became very fond of her, even though our Italian is not much and her English is non-existent. And I don't think she speaks "official" Italian anyway, which is basically the Tuscan variation of Italian. I think she speaks a combination of Sicilian (where she was born and grew up) and Umbrian dialects. But we still managed to communicate. Marcella really lives in her little kitchen with a table taking up nearly all the room and a television at one end, that is constantly on. Marcella has lots of visitors, is in her late 80's, is very sharp and hates Albanians and the Pope. It really was too soon for a German pope, after all the country suffered in World Wars I and II. Pope Benedict XIV seems however, to not deserve Marcella's contempt since he was only 14 in 1941 and although a member of the Hitler Youth (required of all 14-year-old boys at that time), he reportedly refused to go to meetings. John Paul II, a Pole, had already paved the way for a non-Italian Pope and it appears he was much loved in Italy (there are still many little shrine-like alcoves with his picture for example.) I don't think older Italian women scorn Benedict XIV because's just not Italian or because he's too conservative, but I could be wrong.

So anyway, after finding a place to stay, and with Carol mostly recovered, we had a perfect Saturday, which I will tell about next.

p.s. Just last week Kyle, Carol and Sam received a post card from Marcella, but are not absolutely sure it's in English, although one of her student friends probably wrote it for her. Oh, I'll tell about the students later too.