Part V: Umbria

On New Years Eve we took a train and headed to the region of Umbria. We stayed in the town of Assisi while we were there. We tried to check into the hotel but it was too early in the day and they wouldn't let us. Luckily, they let us leave our big bags there. We got back on a train and went to the town of Todi.

Todi was the cutest little town and it is built up on a hill. It is surrounded by the greenest hills I have ever seen! It was great! Our main purpose of going there was to by some awesome authentic olive oil!! Unfortunately, we got there right around lunch, and being in Italy, all of the shops closed for about 2 hours or so. So we got to wander around a bit. We walked through the small cobble stone streets and found a park with an amazing view, it was so peaceful. Once the shops opened we went to find some olive oil. The first shop we found was perfect. The guy who owned it really knew what he was doing. The shop had been owned by his family for over 100 years! That definitely earned our trust. We bought some great olive from him. After that we came across another shop that was owned by a guy who made the olive oil personally!! We definitely bought some from him! It was amazing!!

We went to catch our train back to Assisi and ended missing our train!! We had to wait for 2 hours at the station for the next one. It was only the start to our night. We got back to Assisi and it was, obviously, later than we had planned on getting back. Due to it being a holiday, everything was closing, including all of the places that sold food. And all of the restaurants were either closed or packed full, we didn't know what to do and we were hungry. We walked down to the nearest McDonalds only to find that even that was closed. It was Jon's turn for a breakdown, it was a bad night. We finally found a little pastry and sandwich shop that was still open. We got a few sandwiches, some pastries, a couple of drinks, and after we were done eating, we got a few snacks to take back to the hotel. It wasn't the best food, but it was something. However, when we went to pay for it we were charged $60!! We couldn't believe it! We then went back to the hotel and played cards until midnight. All in all, probably one of the worst New Years celebrations ever. At least we were in Italy, that made up for it.

The next day we went up to the see the city of Orvieto where they have a really pretty cathedral! We had planned our day out perfectly so that we only had about 2 hours in order to catch certain trains so that we could get everywhere we wanted to go and get home. It wouldn't have been so bad, but it was a holiday so there were less trains. Orvieto was cute, another city up on a hill! It was gorgeous! After that we headed to the city of Perugia, a city that is famous for their chocolate. We had to hurry but we did find the main chocolate store there and bought some! It was cool. It was dark by then so we couldn't see much but it was a really pretty and clean city, I really liked it!

That was our last day in Umbria, we never actually had the time to go to the main city of Assisi, it just never worked out. It was okay though, we saw it from a distance. The next morning we took a train to head to a port so we get on a boat and head to our next location. While we were trying to get on the boat the outside rubber on both wheels of one of our suitcases got torn and we had to cut the rubber off, leaving just the plastic. Unfortunately, it was SUPER stormy that night! The boat was fairly small and it was so rocky that we couldn't even leave the room because it was too hard to walk around! Our bags were falling over and Jon almost fell out of the bunk bed. We were so sick, even with motion sickness pills. We couldn't even eat dinner because we were too sick! It was a terrible night!!! We couldn't even believe it! On top of it, the ride was a good 4 or 5 hours longer than it should have been. Yuck!




Umbria was amazingly gorgeous!!! For the most part it was really enjoyable!!!

p.s. If you click on the pictures they are better, really big, but they look better!