A smashing day

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Harriet has been known to be a bit of a hypochondriac. In the past she has suffered from all sorts of illnesses, including a short bout of leukaemia. When she told Fiona and Toby that her foot was broken, they therefore assumed that she was stretching the truth a little bit and perhaps she was just sore from all the walking we have been doing. Eventually the moaning became too much and we investigated further, only to discover that her shoes were too small and she has bruised her toe. The designer outlets didn't really have anything that would be suitable but we had heard of another outlet place that had high street shops as well as Nike, Adidas etc. so that was where we headed this morning. The mall is supposed to be set out like a typical Tuscan village with a central piazza. It just looked like an outlet mall to us, but there were lots of shops and we browsed a while before finding the perfect shoe in the Nike store. We had the obligatory gelato and came back to the villa to enjoy the pool.

We had been a little disappointed with Perugia and wanted to give it another try. Corso Cavour, which is the main street, is said to come alive after dusk and the steps of the cathedral fill with Perugians eating gelato and watching the world go by. Dinner in Perugia seemed a good option. We parked in a different car park to last time, but still got escalators up to the city. These came up through some amazing passages which were old streets that had been built over.

Our first stop was for aperitivi. We sat outside and Harriet ordered in Italian. She is now fluent in ordering drinks - maybe not quite what her Italian teacher is hoping she will learn. The drinks came with a platter of antipasti. Tisis typical of aperitivi, but the price of the drinks increases to compensate.Toby had researched the best pizza in Perugia which was down a small side street. We eventually tracked it down only to discover it was shut. Our next choice was a nearby restaurant that Fiona recognised the name of from Lonely Planet. We got seated and looked at the menus before we all agreed we didn't want to eat there. So we sneaked out and went to the main street where everyone else seemed to be eating.

There was a cold wind blowing but we ate outside anyway. It was strange to actually feel cold after being so hot for so long - we're not sure how we will cope when we get to the snow in Argentina. Harriet announced that her pizza was the best she had ever had. It was 4 cheeses and she loved the blue cheese, as well as it having the perfect crust. As we were outside the waiters had to come quite a long way with the plates. To save time and effort they were carrying several dishes at once. It was very impressive. So impressive that Harriet wanted to show us how it is done. Apparently her clever sister Jessi can do it. Unfortunately Harriet can't and as we were outside her dish fell onto the cobbled street making a loud smash and a big mess. We giggled all the way to the gelato stores.

We had to go to 2 different stores as Toby and Harriet wanted to try them out. Harriet ordered in one and Toby in the other. Fiona wasn't going to have any until she saw the flavours- who could resist rum baba gelato? However we still haven't found a gelato to rival those we ate at Augustus in Perugia last week. We will continue to search.

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