Spoleto and Perugia

3 giugno
I spent the weekend at 2 cities in Umbria. 1st was Spoleto which is a nice city with a wonderful bridge/aqueduct from Roman times, a pretty duomo, a big fort and all those things you expect from a medieval Italian city. They hosted a festival which occurs each year in the 1st weekend of June called vini nel mondo which translates easily enough. In reality, most of the wines are from surrounding provinces such as the Marche, Tuscany and the home state of Umbria with a sprinkling of wines from the rest of Italy and one champagne as I remember. Then there are concerts in many of the plazas Saturday night. Spoleto is near other wonderful towns such as Orvieto and Assisi, which i have visited previously and can be found wayyyy below in the posts of last year. Sunday, I travelled by train to Perugia which is a truly cosmopolitan, international city full of students in italy studying the language and tourists visiting their kids, i imagine. I have a couple of pix from there on this posting. Luckily for Raffaele and I, they were having a fair of different products all made in ecologically sound fashion and we found a supplier for soaps, and cheese and little handmade baskets for the agriturismo.. We are trying to get it right down to the smallest details. On the way back, we stopped in Norcia, which is also a pretty little town full of artisans, and there we scouted out producers for cheese and cured meat and chocolates. A productive weekend!!