Wednesday, March 26, 2025
Note: While the full text post is here, the majority of the photos will be found on our Trying on Italy Facebook page.
We arrived in Spoleto about 7:00 a.m. Wednesday morning…
Sleep deprived, wobbly, excited, in great need of caffeine, and crossing our fingers the bags arrived with us, we deplaned and coursed the gauntlet through the Rome airport. You would think as many times as we have flown into Rome, we would be able to get from point A to point B etc with our eyes closed, but not the case. There is familiarity, but good heavens… We still wander around looking and feeling mostly lost!
Tucked inside our little black Fiat panda, we hit the road towards Spoleto. Once you clear the airport area and make several transitions onto the main highway, the countryside begins to open up and that’s when the real “I’m in Italy!” hits.
The rows of huge umbrella pines that to me just scream Rome dance across the landscape of mostly rolling green hills and valleys with the larger hills of Rome providing the backdrop. Everything was electric green… Spring has definitely started making itself known here. And such a gorgeous day! Clear blue skies, cool temps, and that special scent in the air that reminds you new life is just about to go full-blown present.
We decided to make one coffee stop at a roadside Autogrill, but so did every other business man, laborer, and vans full of field trip kids. Espresso is always a good idea for the jet-lagged, but we backtracked quickly and decided just to head on to our destination.
Our host Danilo and his teenage daughter met us just outside the town and kindly escorted us to the apartment. Its perfect. Right in the center of the old town, tucked along a quiet via and surrounded by ancient stone buildings that fit somehow perfectly together like an Escher drawing. After they departed, we began unpacking and exploring our new home.
But we needed food…badly. A nice walk and we found a perfct trattoria near Piazza Mercato, our favorite hangout from the last trip. A bowl of strangottzi (the local pasta that is like a cross between fettuccine and pici) dressed in aromatic tartufo, a steaming hot bowl of soup with a variety of local legumes…all prefaced with two huge “taglieri” – aka charcuterie. Each “set”, including our water (always a charge here for bottled water ) was 18 euro!
Feeling a little more human, we returned to finish unpacking and decided, despite our normal notion to push through, that a nap would be a good idea. We truly did not sleep the entire trip due to being seated right by the bathroom, seats that seemed to lack any cushioning, and Marty getting jostled constantly by the knees of Mr. Longlegs seated behind him. Such is air travel unless you spend the big bucks for one of those cushy lay down seats!
We felt so much better after getting a little rest, then decided to organize things a bit more before heading out to explore on foot. It’s still a quiet time of year here. Maybe a tourist here and there, but things won’t pick up until closer to Easter. We had our first aperitivo back in Piazza Mercato. This was more of an “aperi-cena” – when you’re given so much food with your drink that you really don’t need anything else! And cheap — €10 for a cocktail, Prosecco, and all of the snacks so kindly provided!
Marty decided he did want a little bit more so we found a great spot where pizza by the slice was easy to grab.
Crawling into a bed never felt so good. Unusual for us, we both slept mostly through the night other than a bit of a wake up around 2:30 AM from which melatonin quickly pushed us back into sleep.