We woke up in a tower this morning. That is just fun to say.
After packing up and having breakfast, we set out to see a few more things in Perugia before our train to Rome later in the afternoon. Yesterday we saw the sights in the north of the city, and today we walked to see things in the southern part. Mostly this included visiting churches - the biggest church in Umbria (the region where Perugia is located), an over-the-top ornately decorated church, a church that was made up of four oratoriums stacked on top of one another, and the church with the nicest cloisters in Perugia. 
Walking to see all the churches left us at a much lower elevation than the city center, so we explored the series of escalators that were constructed during the late 80's. For obvious reasons, the escalators are very popular. We made it to the top, and exited into an old fortress called the Rocca Paolina, which was built by the Pope in the 1500's. Its essentially a "city within a city" - it used to be five stories tall, but now its mostly just the basement level that is left. And its still amazing. There are street names on some of the walls and while the museum was closed, almost all of the fortress seems to still be open for the public to walk through so we checked it out and it felt like we were in a giant maze.
We walked through town checking out the street fair vendors (my favorite was the "Schmuck" stand - it didn't matter what they sold, it was still my favorite booth). Besides the crafts it seems that the northern Italians are really excited about things from Sicily (and we were happy to give our tastebuds a walk down memory lane). We had an Arancini (fried rice ball with peas, cheese, and ragu), and from another vendor got some olives from the assorted heaping piles on the table. Everyone was shopping like crazy even though it was a little drizzly.We made it to the National Gallery which was another museum on our list. There was a special exhibit called "Chagall to Fellini", which was pretty interesting. There were paintings, photographs, and sketches by various artists including Chagall, Picasso, Dali, Warhol, Man Ray, etc. They also had some clips from some of Fellini's movies. The rest of the museum was less of a thrill. Over 40 rooms full of paintings of our favorite duo - Mary and JC. We did a quick walk through, mostly amazed with the size of the palace where the museum is located.
After the museum, we walked around a bit more and stumbled upon a mushroom exhibit. Two huge tents full of mushroom varieties labeled toxic, edible, or good. I confirmed that "edible" doesn't mean they taste good, just means you can eat them without dying.
We only had about an hour left before we wanted to start heading down to the train station. At this point, it started to rain a lot harder so we decided to just get a pizza to take back to our hotel where we had a mini pizza-party, and then had a slow, wet walk to the train. Three hours later we arrived in Rome. After a short bus ride, we arrived at our apartment where we'll be staying for the last month of our trip. I'm not allowed to complain, but it leaves a lot to be desired (especially after the place in Perugia). On the plus side, we're in the Trastevere neighborhood which is full of restaurants, bars, and is close to a lot of things we want to see here. Pictures of Rome will come with the next blog.
Gelato Gusti per il Giorno:
Mike - Pistacchio e Stracciatella
Aviva - n/a
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