“Rest” Day

I love my rest days, they are no less full than my non-rest days, but I just don’t ride.  I can’t stand “resting” anyway – it’s so very boring, no?  I tried to do one of my favorite things when in Italy (in addition to touring the city by bike), which is to find a local café that opens early in the morning, set my computer up to write and review photos from the previous day, and “watch the city wake up”.  While on other tours, everyone typically has breakfast in the hotel where it is already included, but in my opinion you miss the “real beauty” of a city shaking off its slumber when you do that.  Unfortunately for me on this morning, it was a steady rain, and so the outdoor cafés what would have lent themselves to this were not really functioning, and I had to settle for a similar experience with an indoor “bar” as the Italians call their cafés.   I also like to see how much of the chit chat I can pick up with my struggling Italian as each person comes in to order their coffee and “donut”.  This I was able to do as this small indoor café had no shortage of early clientele.

 

After completing my update, it was time to head to Passignano.  This is where another friend I met on line lived.  I met Rita on Skype like all my other Italian friends so far, only to discover that she was the sister of another person (Giuseppe) I began talking to just a few months earlier.  Both of them allowed me to be added to their Skype lists independently.  It was a funny discovery that they were related after I had already established a relationship with each separately.  Anyway, Rita’s husband Franco is a painter, and one day she shared his site with me that has a large portion of his work displayed.  You can check them out at http://www.francoraffignone.com/index.html.  When I saw them, I fell in love with his style, and began to chat with him about converting a photo of our little “farm” that I have on our website into one of his impressionistic paintings.   Anyway, to make a long story short, where they live in Passignano is just 30 minutes away from Perugia where I was already planning on passing through, so naturally, I had to add a visit with them to my itinerary.

 

In customary Italian fashion, and true to this trip so far, he and Rita set aside the bulk of this day for me, and Franco took us to another little town called Cortona.  Cortona is one of Franco’s favorite little cities where he shows some of his paintings from time to time, and where a lot of his subjects come from.  It is an old town with beautiful views of the valley and the delightfully old architecture that I seem to never get enough of.  Between the history of the Romans and the Truscans and the personal introductions to everyone from shop owners to the local “friar”, the tour was one of the best I’ve had in Italy – maybe Franco “missed his calling”… NOT.  Kidding aside, it was simply perfect.

 

From there we proceeded to his house where Rita was waiting for us, and after customary hugs and greetings (which is always special after knowing someone for many months on line), he showed me his studio and some of his more recent work done at a rodeo while visiting his son in Louisiana.  We also discussed the details of the painting he will do for me, and now I can’t wait for it to be done.  Hopefully by the fall I’ll have it hanging in my dining room.  From his house, we went to have lunch at a small restaurant over looking lake Trasimeno (just a couple km from his house).  It is a beautiful lake and an area very popular with locals as well as tourists for that reason. 

 

It was fascinating for me to see how easily we spoke all day between English and Italian.  Outside of perhaps 2 or 3 times, I could understand everything in Italian, even though my participation was always more limited.  I had wondered how we would know when to speak English, and if I would still get some practice at Italian, but somehow, there just seemed to be an effortless flow between both languages (fortunately for me both Franco and Rita are as fluent in English as Marzia).

 

By this time it was closing in on 4pm, as we had our lunch in a nice “slow food” sort of way.  Upon arriving back at the hotel, I finished my “birthday update” for the blog, and Marzia went out to tour Perugia.  With my update complete, I had a few hours of light left, and naturally, I wanted to see more of Perugia than I could through the blinding rain the evening I arrived.  I therefore had them get my bike out of storage, and as I began to ride I noticed that my back tire was completely flat.  Wow!  This was another “gift” from yesterday – had this happened to me during the torrents of rain while Marzia and I were separated, it would have been a colossal hassle at best and a nightmare at worst. 

Anyway, I changed the tire and I was off to do my “Cittography” (do you like my new word… “citta” + “photography”).  Perugia however, was not nearly as “efficient” a city for touring because of the crazy amount of steep hills and strange one way streets and overall confusion.  I think that the original protectors of this city decided to use CONFUSION as one of their weapons to protect the city from invaders, since even the residents must get lost here.

 

Finally, I returned to my room for a short video call with my family at home before heading out to dinner around 9:00pm.  Yes, it was a full day, but yes, it was also very relaxing in a “Gene” sort of way.