Blogs from Umbria, Italy, Europe - page 8

In Perugia we met other friends called Christine, Daniele, and Greta. We have done lots of shopping here because there has been lots of SALES for us girls hahha. We went to Florence wich was beautiful and we also saw the leaning tower of Pisa wich was amazing we didn't really now it leant that much. We climed up that to. It was all twisty twervy. We went out to dinner nearly every night and also went swimming and diving in the local pools and our friends have been very nice. Next place we are going to is bologna for 2 nights then Milan then marsille, then Paris. We Re halfway through see ya soon!!... read more

Harriet needed some sleep today, so Fiona and Toby left her in bed when they went into the village for bread. They checked out the local post office which is on the main piazza and has beautiful blue doors. The opening times looked like they would work for us to send parcels back home which helps with the huge amount of luggage we seem to have. Back at the villa we spent most of the morning relaxing around the pool. We were ready for the rest and some time to catch up on reading and writing. Pretty soon it seemed like gelato time. Toby thought it would be a good idea to take Harriet to the village cafe for gelato and to post the parcel at the same time. Fiona thought walking up the hill again ... read more

Is Fiona obsessed with rugby? That depends on whether you think asking your landlady if you can watch the game on her TV when you could have been by the pool or sightseeing in Umbria is over the top. Whatever your opinion it doesn't matter because that is what happened. When we had first arrived, Aine, the landlady, had told us we could watch the Olympics as we had the sports channels. We quickly discovered this wasn't true and even though she tried to sort it out with Sky it wasn't possible to get the sports channels in our villa. However we knew that she had them in her house. Fiona double checked with her yesterday as to the status of the sports package and she was apologetic that we couldn't get it but was very ... read more

Yesterday we stumbled upon the delicious gelato de neri, last week we stumbled upon the quirky Gubbio and today we stumbled upon Orvieto cathedral. We had been planning to go to Orvieto since before we left Australia because we wanted to visit the Itlian home of a friend of Toby's. We hadn't planned on spending any time in the town but John, who we were visiting, suggested that we go to the cathedral before going to is place for lunch. We hadn't realised that this week is THE holiday week for Italians. The main reason for it being this week is that August 15 is the feast of the assumption. We also hadn't realised that the feast of the assumption was today. So when we got to the cathedral and the doors were literally shut in ... read more

Although we are enjoying looking at all the sights as we travel, people are the most important thing. We loved spending the week in Rhodes with family and today we spent the day with friends. It is a little ridiculous that we had to come to Italy to meet them as they only live in New Zealand, but the coincidence of being so close on another continent couldn't be passed by. Regan and David had been in the youth group Fiona ran in Balclutha in the late 90's. She had attended their wedding shortly after we had moved to Australia and hadn't seen them since. Facebook had kept us in touch and we had realised we were all travelling for three months and our paths crossed this week. They were staying in Tuscany and a half ... read more