Perugia 2023
Photo by Silviu Alexandru Avram
It was a lovely day of spring, on the 19th of March to be exact. I am a very big fan of the lazy Sunday concept, but somehow I always manage to ruin it in a spectacular fashion. And this one was no exception. It was a great day for science and productivity in general, or at least that's how I felt. As I closed my laptop after finishing a PR for downshift, I took a last sip of my Starbucks matcha tea latte and decided to check the horoscope (skyscanner.net).
Fueled by the warm sensation of accomplishment, I submitted a search for all the flights in the remainder of March, without any specific destination. And just like that, the stars aligned, the planets made love, and the horoscope whispered that I should book a flight to Perugia, from the 26th to the 30th, for a total price of 40 bucks.
Intriguing, I know. The horoscope gave me the answer I was looking for, but I had to find my own answers to questions like ... what is Perugia anyway? So after a bit of google google guess what I found out. Perugia is a lovely city in the middle of Italy, the capital of the Umbria region, at equal distance between Florence and Rome, two beautiful cities that I enjoyed very much in the past.
And this wasn't the best part. Right next to Perugia there is this big lake called Trasimeno. And if you enjoyed history in school as much as I did, you may remember about a certain battle of Lake Trasimene, where the Romans got their butts kicked by Hannibal's Celtic mercenaries. A bit of history always works well with coffee and tiramisu, if you ask me.
Oh, and there's also this other town near Perugia called Assisi, full of big churches and with a castle, a bit of a mix of Sighisoara and Brasov.
It was looking good so far, as far as I saw it. Plenty of stuff to do for a 4 day trip. First 2 days aperol spritzing in Perugia, one day for a Lake Trasimeno bike ride, and one last lazy day for church visits and lazy walks. To be sure about everything, I checked the second horoscope (booking.com) and Mercury was generous there as well. Found a decent apartment close to the train station, booked everything and I was all set for one of my spontaneous Italian trip.
Perugia Day #1
I passed trough a few small airports in my life, but San Francesco airport is on another level. It's like a small train station. The airplane pulls up right next to the airport. Because it's most likely to be the only plane in the airport at the time. You just hop off and walk inside, go through the immigration room, and directly outside. If it's your first time there and you're looking for an obvious way to get a bus into town, you're in the wrong place. It became immediately obvious that renting a car would have been a good idea.
That aside, we got to Perugia by bus eventually, and while the apartment was getting ready, we made for the city center. Not ideal when you have bags, but we were excited to walk the city for the first time and not take public transport just yet. And it's not a long walk, 25 minutes max. As we realised that the walk was more like a climb and we also had the bags with us, public transport suddenly sounded like the better alternative.
So there we were in the city center, which was the only place with people. We found nobody on our way there, and we started wondering if the town is dead or if there was a holiday. Once in the center, we went for Piazza IV Novembre and visited the National Gallery in Palazzo dei Priori. The place looked good on the outside, but the gallery itself was a bit disappointing. Do you know those weird medival religious paintings usesd to make memes out of? Yep, that was the place.
As the tour was over, we left our bags at the apartment and went back to the center to do some exploring and content creation for the gram. This time, we used a public transport called the Minimetro, which is an automatic train cabin that serves a few stops, including the city center and the train station. Never used anything like it before, it was actually very exciting!
| Cloudy skies over Perugia | Church of Sant'Ercolano |
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We found Terrazza del Mercato with a gorgeous view of Umbria and the mountains to the East. Great place to sip your aperol and enjoy the graphics of life. We also found a few places to eat, obviously, and the most important were the O Sole Mio pizzeria and the Lick gelato place. Top tip: if you go to Italy, always, always, locate the take away pizza place conveniently situated, where you can enjoy a few slices of great pizza and a beer. Italian restaurands are very (VERY) picky about their time of serving lunch and dinner, so if you're caught off hours, the pizza place is your ultimate salvation. It saved us 4 times in total, with great pizza, arancini and Ichnusa. And I'm not even slighly mad about that.
Perugia Day #2
Still hungry for instagram content, as the first day was not very productive, we went full on exploring the next day, even though the rainy weather was better fit for sensual bachata. We found some very good places such as the Garducci Gardens, the Acquedotto Medievale, the Chiesa di San Michele Arcangelo, and the Chiesa di Sant'Agostino.
In order to be able to walk, visit and take pictures, good coffee plays an important part, and the Pinturicchio Cafe did not disappoint. Caffee Arco was fine as well, but did not compare.
Overall, it was a good day for visiting and content creation. We felt that we saw enough of Perugia and we were satisfied about it. The next day was supposed to be sunny, which was necessary to achieve our next objective.
Lago Trasimeno
After a short train ride we were in the town of Passignano sul Trasimeno, the starting point of what was supposed to be our Trasimeno lake bike ride. We rented the bikes and off we went, towards the almost middle point of the journey, Castiglione del Lago. According to Google Maps, we had enough time to perform a full circle around the lake in our time frame of 7 hours, lunch and cofee stops included. Consequently, we started our journey full of optimism and joy, like Gaius Flaminius and his friends.
As we got closer to a checkpoint, namely Campo del Sole, lunch hour was drawing to a close, so we decided to abandon the main road, and head over to the town of Tuoro sul Trasimeno and have something to eat. We were the only people in the town when we arrived, along with a couple of others, probably the mayor and some people at the local bar. Everything else looked deserted and closed. Eventually, we found one open restaurant, Osteria dell'Accademia, which had really good food and service, with the best bread I had for a while. Coperto well spent.
| Silviu riding a bike near Lago Trasimeno | Sunset over Lago Trasimeno |
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Back on the road, we resumed the journey, with a few stops along the way, one of which was a field of daffodils. No, not your usual Instagram rapeseed photos, this was with actual daffodils. Glorious. Eventually, we arrived in Castiglione at about 16:30, 4 hours after leaving Passignano. Unfortunately, we did not visit the town, as it required us to leave the bikes and climb, because, obviously, the town was on a steep hill. Climbing would not have been a problem, but as we were doing the math, it would have been impossible to go round the lake and reach the end point by 19:30, the time we had to return the bikes.
Either Italian Google Maps tricked us, or we were just outrageously slow, because it turned out that the actual time it took us to reach a certain point by bike was two times the one estimated by Italian Google. And on that bombshell, we had to abandon the original plan of doing a full circle around the lake and go back the way we came. Italian Google clearly said it would take 1 hour to get back. It took us 2, like the priest.
With a bit of disappointment and much hunger, we dined in Passignano and got the (last) train back to Perugia. It was not all negative though. The weather was great, we took many pictures, and no army ambushed us along the way.
Assisi
The third and final stop of the trip was the town of Assisi, a few kilometers from Perugia. There isn't much to tell about the town, to be honest. Just your usual medieval town full of churches and a castle on top of a hill. The weather, this time, sucked big time. There were gusts of wind that reminded me of the Grozavesti intersection.
| Assisi Castle | View from Assisi |
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On the (brief) bright side, the churches were very beautiful, especially the main one, Basilica of San Francesco d'Assisi. Apart from them and the view point near the castle, the town was cute, but it did not blow our hats off. The wind did that.
Final Thoughts
Overall, I enjoyed the trip, the towns of Assisi and Perugia are definitely worth visiting. Also, if you plan to go to Lago Trasimeno and intend to do a full circle, make sure you are really fast, or maybe stop for the night along the way. I'd go woth the second option, as a romantic stop at a hotel with a lake view is probably a good idea.
If I would do it all over again, I would also rent a car, and buy accomodation in multiple places: two nights in Perugia, one in Assisi, one or two at the lake, and so on. You would probably get more out of the Umbria trip like that, instead of having your accomodation in a single place and take trains and buses to the other points of interest. Just make sure to heed advice #1: pizza place that is conveniently situated.
Allora, that's all folks. Wrapping this one and will publish it. It has been a productive Sunday, on the 2nd of April, I am pretty happy about everything, to be honest. Hmm, I wonder what the horoscope has to say about it.