Carleen's travel blog: Giorno Quattro

Where to begin? The hotel is in an 18th century palazzo. Our room is spacious with few electrical outlets. Nightlight or phone plug in but not both at the same time. We were greeted with a glass of prosecco, settled in, and went to explore the town. Population 8000 with buildings dating back centuries. There is a 40 site walking tour which is wonderful. We found a cute bar called Open Celery in Italian, a play on open sesame. The proprietor greeted us with “kinichiwa”. Then bon jour, guten abend and bono sera. After walking around and having our usual apperativo, we headed to dinner at the hotel. Stated with potato croquettes in a cheese sauce followed by tortellini in a truffle and porcini sauce followed by eggplant parmesean and a milleflore dessert, washed down with the local vino of course.
This morning’s breakfast was fit for a king - fruit, yogurt, granola, eggs, bacon, cold cuts, Brie cheese and lots of pastries. We walked around town a little more,then went to Fonti del Clitunno, a beautiful park for the artists to paint. There were drooping willows, water, swans, etc. Lieu, one of the women on the tour is not a painter so we took off walking - did 6 miles. We saw a lot of the countryside - olive groves and olive oil presses, a factory that makes pizza ovens and a truffle shop. The proprietor let us smell the white truffles - addictive! They go for 200 Euros per kilo. Yikes!!
There was a man alongside the road in a beater car with his trunk open, picking things off the ground, He handed us a bunch of walnuts and showed us how to open them with a rock. The weather is drop dead gorgeous.
On the way back, we went to a 2700 year old olive tree where the first bishop of Trevi was hanged and beheaded in 300AD. Wish I could down load the photos now.
The town is having a medieval festival tonight with drumming, etc. It should be quite the party. Wonder what’s for dinner???