This past weekend was a long one thanks to Monday being All Saint's Day which is a big deal in Europe and a national holiday in Italy. We left Friday afternoon for Orvieto which is in the Umbria region. It takes a little over five hours on the mid-speed train. When we got to Orvieto is was one of those get dinner and head to bed nights.
We woke up in the morning and spent it exploring Orvieto. We went to the Duomo which is beautiful and built over many centuries so it's kinda a piecework building. After that we mainly just wandered. We found a few more churches and beautiful views. Orvieto is on top of a hill and you can see all the other hills of Umbria and other small villages from the top. It's really beautiful and I took tons of pictures. I definitely recommend the trip but you don't need more than a day (we did it in a half day) to see the city. It's very small and quaint.
Then we headed to Perugia. We ran into some transportation issues getting to our hostel. It's actually a farmhouse on the outskirts of Perugia but beautiful. We had to take a bus and unlike Milan all the stops were not listed on the sign. We got confused and got off too early. However, we had a crazy bus drive and she barely let me out the door and my two friends ended up a stop away and walked back to me. We waiting half an hour for the next bus with a much more sane bus driver and a girl who was staying the same place we were. She helped us find the place. It was wonderful. We were literally in a farmhouse in a four person dorm (our fourth roommate ended up being the girl who helped us on the bus). There was a little kitchen and two common areas. We bought some food and cooked at the hostel since the bus to Perugia stopped pretty early in the evening (about eight or nine). We met some really nice people including the girl who helped us, an Australian girl backpacking through Europe, and an Australian/New Zealander couple who was on a three week vacation and more or less backpacking through Italy.
Sunday morning we got up and went to Assisi. That's right, I spent Halloween in what is considered by many to be a very holy place. We saw the St. Francis cathedral which is beautiful but was very crowded. We ended up being in the lower church (there is a lower church and an upper church) for part of a mass while waiting to see St. Francis's tomb. The upper church has beautiful frescos of St. Francis's life. After the church we wandered a bit, got some lunch, and just followed random signs we found. We stumbled across a few more churches including Santa Chiara (St. Claire) and went in to see her tomb as well. She's actually preserved so you can see her lying there in all her glory. It was a bit creepy when we realized it but the church and tomb were beautiful. By the time we made it back to Perugia it was later and so we went back to the hostel to chill and eat some dinner.
Monday we got up and went into the Perugia city center. From the train station you have to take a mini metro up the hill and then a bunch of escalators. Basically, all of these towns are considered "hill towns" and are like this in various ways. We took a bus or a funicolare in Orvieto, we took a bus up and walked down in Assisi, and Perugia has this nice mini-metro thing.
We basically wandered Perugia. A lot of things were closed but there was a festival and lots of booths. We bought chocolate which Perugia is famous for and saw some nice churches. The main church in Perugia looks like nothing on the outside. It's downright ugly. Then you walk in and I think it took my breath away because I was expecting nothing and it's just beautiful. We also so the Etruscan Arch in the town which has a lot of Etruscan ruins. It's a very medieval town.
However, the most interesting part of our entire trip might have been getting back to Milan.
Originally we had planned to stay in Orvieto all the nights but ran into issues finding a room, hence how we ended up in Perugia for two nights. But our tickets to Milan departed from Orvieto. So we took two trains from Perugia to Orvieto and were two hours early for our train. Due to the extreme rain we stayed in the train station and chilled. Read books, got some pizza, and relaxed.
Then we see that our train is five minutes late. Then ten...twenty...twenty-five...thirty...one hour and fifty minutes delayed. We're already getting back to Milan rather late so this is going to be a disaster because we want to make the metros back home (metros stop running around 12:40 or 12:45). So we notice there's a 6:15 train going to Milano Centrale as well (our train was supposed to be at 5:44) and it's only 10 minutes delayed. We try to get our tickets changed and the guy at the booth says the trains will be running pretty much at the same time so it doesn't matter. However, since it's the same type of train we knew we wouldn't get kicked off if we took another train of the same value as our ticket (some of our friends found this out once). The 6:15 ended up being only half an hour late so we got on. Problem was...no seats. We had reserved seats on the other train. So we stood. And then we sat on the ground. And then in Florence (about two hours later) we got seats. Then we lost them in one stop (about ten minutes). And then we stood until Bologna (another hour). Right next to the door between the cars that kept opening of it's own accord. Finally at Florence one of my friends got a seat and I found a nice spot on the floor by some luggage. I stayed there for about twenty minutes before another stop left enough open seats that I was able to finally sit down in a real seat for the rest of the ride. And luckily I made the second to last metro of the night.
It was an adventure but all three towns were beautiful and definitely worth the trip.
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