Ancona

13 June 2013 Moving on.

Basta ya. Enough about food. We took one helluva fast train to Ancona on the coast. A seedy old port town with an interesting atmosphere, and yep, we found a great little Osteria Tratoria for lunch which was so busy we had to stand for 15 minutes to get a table. Of note, neither the food nor customer service was compromised by this ultra-busy lunch rush. Impressive.

I write now from the old hilltop citadel town of Perugia in the province of Umbria. This place is fabulous in its olde-ness, and even from the window of our humble Albergo Aurora we get beautiful views out over the plains far below. We are now paying 40 Euros per night, and in Ancona it dropped to 56 Euros for each for the two nights. This is now affordable. It does appear from our talking with locals that the Crisis has seen a downturn in tourism (Christ, if that was a downturn we experienced in Florence I’d hate to be in Italy in a good season!). We took a bus to Assisi today – another fabulous ye olde worlde fortress citadel town way up on the heights. It is, I must confess, all very beautiful: the outstanding views, the olde architecture, lots of places to eat and drink, the vast castle.

Yes we are taking photos but won’t be down-loading them for a while. But if you google Images of any of the places we are visiting you will get a good idea ofwhat we are witnessing. Pretty awesome. We are going to stay here in Perugia for a few days. It ain’t half bad.