Urbania, Italy

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Sunday, 3-June-12 – Urbania

Gail starts her 2 week Italian course tomorrow.

We had a bit of misinformation about getting here. We were told that there was a bus leaving every day at 3:30pm and arriving about 5:30 pm.

It turns out that the bus doesn’t run on Sunday (today), so we enquired as to buses on Saturday. Turns out that Saturday was a public holiday in Italy – so no buses. And if they had been running, we would have had 5 changes of buses!!

We finished up having to hire a car and driver!! Very expensive. So, we were picked at 1:30 pm. After about 90 minutes travel through some mountainous country with lots of switch-back roads, we arrived in Urbania.

Having now idea of where we were supposed to be heading to our accommodation, the driver left us at the town square.

After a few attempts at communicating with the locals, we were fortunate to come across an expat artist (David Booker) from Sydney who had been living in Italy for 20 years. He was exhibiting some of his drawings in the Palazzo Ducale, and he was able to assist us to find the owner of the flat we were allocated by the school that Gail is attending. After a bit of walking, we were guided to the address. (Thanks David)

David was assisted by an assorted group of blokes sitting around the town square. one of them call the landlord who was at a wedding but recruited his cousin to take us to the appartment. The landlord's wife arrived to take us there, but her car was full of kids. They managed to squeeze our lugguage in and we walked behind. When we finally arrived at the apartment, all filed in to have a look and setttle us in. We still don't know who some of these people were, but they were all very friendly.

The accommodation we’ve been allocated is a lovely 1 bedroom apartment with lounge/dining/kitchen area, bathroom/toilet/laundry. It’s almost brand new (we were told that we were the first tenants).

We are loving the Italian building standards - lots of recycling. Which means not much of the fit-out actually lines up - eg; circa 2000 kitchen looks like an IKEA rerun which is pretty wonky. There is an analogue TV - doesn't work because the network is digital - gotta love Italiana! Luca, the owner, is enterprising and very clever in his work.

Luca Rossi is a nice guy who speaks a little English, so we are able to communicate reasonably well.

The unit overlooks the town and neighbouring citadel, gardens and beautiful forests, and everything is reasonably close, so we’re still doing a lot of walking.

Prices are again cheap. For example – a 600ml bottle of Heineken beer costs €1.39 (about $AU1.78) from the supermarket.

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Photos

View from our unit in Urbania
Looking out from the front yard.

Urbania, Italy
One scene in the town