We had another amazing day in the Umbria region. I love this area so much. There is so much to do and so much going on in most places. We began our day with homemade tortas, cheeses, and fruit. Mark also adds meats to his breakfast...not so much for me. (Obviously)
Spello was our first destination. We thought we should see more of the little hillside town than just the lavanderia. So, today we headed out about 9:00 and hit Spello. Wow! We were in luck again. They are having their annual Corpus Domini festival. They make HUGE pictures all around the town out of flower petals. It is like flower petal carpets all over the tow. They begin creating them today and they finish tomorrow morning at 7:00. They are then judged and people can walk around and look at them. At 10:00 is the mass and then at 11:00 is the procession. Mark and I are getting up early so we can head over, find parking (even if I have to walk for miles) and get some great photos before all of the beautiful work is destroyed when the procession passes through the area. It is a really big festival and I am so happy we are here to witness it first hand. Look for pictures to come tomorrow.
We stayed in Spello until about 1:00 and then went to Trevi. Trevi is another hillside town. It is really way on top of the hill where is sits. We drove up and up and up before hitting the town itself. Now this is where things got a little Twilight Zone strange. We parked in an area and started to head up the steep street to the town. We didn't see anyone. Not one person when we got up the hill. So, we continued on to the city center and everything was closed and still no people. I kept thinking that maybe the rapture came and Mark and I were the only ones left behind. It was very surreal. We finally saw a couple of tourist and then about 5-6 others while we were walking. There was no place to buy food or drinks or even shop for that matter. It was creeping me out so after a couple of photos we decided to high tail it out of there. I think that Trevi closes up the town on Saturdays and all the locals leave. Very strange I must say.
Our next stop was Montefalco. This is a little town that is only about 10-15 minutes away from our hotel. Along the way we passed fields full of sunflowers, olive trees, wheat fields, lavender fields and vineyards. The colors are stunning. You will see some of these pictures. I had Mark stop along the way to take a few. It turned out that Montefalco was a charming little town. I do mean little literally. We had a very nice lunch as a ristorante. The food was so fresh and delicious! After lunch we went and walked around. We went into the city center where a wedding was coming out of a church. It was so much fun to watch the Italian couple get into their convertible Mercedes and get their picture taken as they were backing up and then driving away. Very nice. We continued to walk around the area. The roads were really narrow and windy. I just think these towns are so quaint. We popped into another church, San Chiara. There were about 8-9 nuns in the church around the altar saying the rosary in Italian. Mark and I sat there quietly until they had finished. You should have heard how beautiful it sounded with the echo in the church. I had never seen that before. I really enjoyed listening to them. As we were heading down to the car park a big charter bus pulled up with a wedding party in it. We didn't get to see the bride, but we saw all of the guest. It is amazing to see young women and older women walking on the brick and stone roads in 4”-6” heels. I had heard they did this, but had never seen it in this setting. It was a great day.
While Mark was uploading the pictures he told me that there were 101 from today. I will only be sharing a handful of them right now. The others will be on a sight I upload them to when we return from out trip.
Tomorrow is going to be a great adventure to experience the Spello Festival. I will make sure to post some of the pictures as soon as we return from our outing. We are also going to hit Assisi again. I so love that place!
Ciao for now!
