All Our Bags Are Packed!

 

                                Europe April/May #18

Truffle Hunting and Perugia

Our daughter, Heather, her friend, Rebecca and Arlene: Time to go truffle hunting. Hopefully, we'll be lucky

"Sara" has been trained to go truffle hunting

Apparently, truffles grow best with specific soil and foliage

Sara "sniffed" a truffle

It's a small one

Heather is eager to participate with a special tool. She find's a medium sized truffle

Another one? Wow! It's big!

Heather is happy with her find; with the help of Sara, of course...

OMG! Jackpot! Paydirt! Her find has a $$$$$ market value

Time to visit the town of Perugia

Picturesque everywhere we looked

Jerry finds a manhole

The Oscar winning movie, "It's A Beautiful Life" was filmed here

Town is famous for its chocolate candies

PBS recently screened a movie about a woman that created different types of chocolate candies in this town

Large, dramatic square or plaza offers plenty of opportunities to take great photos and "people watch"

All of these buildings are old and extraordinarily large for the time they were built

The Etruscans constructed this large well that still provides water today. This is the view looking down 

It's amazing that the cornerstone put in place centuries ago still supports everything 

Town has many interesting alleyways...

and arches

Very few tourists

View from the middle of town

Imagine Roman soldiers marching through these streets

Heather and Arlene enjoying the time to explore "history"

Public drinking fountain. Students filling up their water bottles or drinking directly from a fountain

Plenty of interesting building's with gothic style architecture

So many majestic and beautiful churches

We lit some candles and said a few prayers for peace, health and good fortune for those in need.

What famous artist could have designed and painted the ceiling?

On the way to lunch, we stopped at a stand to sample a stuffed meet sandwich

This is now a famous "hole in the wall" eatery made famous by Stanley Tucci and his TV (CNN) show

Chose your meat!

We also had a large salad and, of course, a bottle of wine

Entrance to a public toilet. We were pleasantly surprised to find clean facilities everywhere we went

It cost 1/2 Euro to use a toilet. The attendant gave us a receipt

Photo "ops" in all directions

There were many steep stairs and walkways to challenge us

An old brick road is exposed

Interesting church

Unusual art work for a church

Marc Anthony church - Recognize the name?

Yea! Another manhole

There are so many interesting "nooks and crannies"

We had the entire area to ourselves

A "new" sidewalk relative to other parts of the town

"Todays" Puglia was built over an old Roman town

We explored the original town which was located below today's Perugia

Many old passageways under the "new" city

This was a thriving area during the Julius Caesar era 

Amazing construction for the era

An old Roman plate was found during the excavation process

Old drainage area in middle of walkway

Friends, Romans and Countrymen...

Amazing entrance

We had a wonderful time exploring Perugia. We even had time for delicious gelato - pistachio and chocolate. Yum!

Fascinating old town