Perusing to Perugia

Janary 30
Today the adventure out of Rome began! We hopped on board, actually buying a pass because we didn’t want to get caught since we would be on for such a long time. The ride wasn’t all that bad, but Termini is definitely not within walking distance. Once we got there we found our way to the ticket booths and printed off our tickets. Our train was leaving in about 3 min. We hurriedly asked a uniformed man where to go and he pointed us in the right direction. Once we reached the train we realized we had assigned seats and instead of being anywhere near each other we were on different cars. I boarded my car and ended up sitting next to some strange old man. He kept trying to talk to me. He said he knew English but would say a couple words then resort to Italian and I couldn’t quite convince him that I had no clue what he was saying. After the train got moving and the ticket checker came by the man moved. We arrived at our stop, I called Kerry and asked her if she thought this is where we should get off. We agreed it was got off and walked into the station. We had a second ticket, which was strange, but as we walked out of the station and into the town of what we thought was Perugia I quickly started to realize that there was a reason for the other ticket. The town’s name was Foligno. When I was reading the ticket for the first time I thought that this “F” name was the name of the station, like Roma Termini. It made sense at the time, looking back on it now, the second ticket did say the name of this town and then Perugia. Once we realized that we had gotten off to early, we headed back to the station and went inside to see when the next train to Perugia was. There was about an hour until the next one so we decided to check out this little town and began wandering towards what we thought might be civilization. We found a little pedestrian shopping area and stopped to have a cappuccino at a little bar. It was there that I was deemed the official translator of the trip. The lady at the cash register was trying to tell us she couldn’t make coin change. So I had to have Kerry pay for my drink because I didn’t have any 1 or 2 Euro coins only a 5 bill. I just kinda knew what she was talking about and Kerry was just confused, but it all worked out.

After coffee, we headed back to the station and got on the train, This one didn’t have assigned seats so we got sit in a little pod of seats by ourselves with no strange Italian men. The ride to Perugia was pretty short. We arrived and decided to ask for directions before wandering too far off in the wrong direction. There are always little booths that have signs that say Tickets/Information, in English and Italian written across the top of their roofs. So I went up to the window and asked the lady if she spoke English, assuming she would, I mean what good is a tourist information booth if you can’t speak to tourists who don’t speak Italia, but she didn’t. I did my best to explain in broken Italian that we were looking for the Chocolate Factory that Perugia is famous for. She just gave me a blank look like I was crazy. I mean chocolate is chocolate in any language, you just change the ending and she for some reason, had no idea what I was saying. So Kerry and I decided just to wing it and start walking in the only direction that looked promising, unfortunately that was uphill. As we got to the first intersection a ways up we thought for a second and decided to try the other way, this wasn’t looking any better. So we headed back down and once we got nearly back to the train station we stopped into a hotel and I went to ask for a pianta (map). The lady said she didn’t have one so I walked out and ended up walking right back in to ask about the Chocolate Factory/Museum. She looked as confused as the information booth lady. She then explained that we should just head toward the city center which was up the hill. So we began walking back up to where we had been going. It was a long hike and after a while we began to realize that it wasn’t going to get any shorter. By the time we realized we were no where near the top, I thought I saw a church steeple so I figured we should keep going because we had already come so far and even if there was no chocolate (which I still think is strange) we would have to see something for walking up this huge Mountain. Of course walking to a church, sure enough we came to a wall…Which resembled the Vatican city wall and I felt as though it could be a long day. The wall ended sooner than our first wall adventure and we discovered that our church wasn’t a church after all. It was a school of some kind, so we went on continuing up the hill. I was no officially convinced that all of Italy seems to be full of conspiracy. We tried to find the club that one night and it was nearly elusive and now the Chocolate town with no Chocolate factory. We trekked further up hill discussing our theories and finally spotted hope. A sign of civilization, an opening in the tree covered sidewalks and traffic up ahead. We had found the city center. What did that mean? Well once we finally arrived at the clearing I realized that it meant nothing. We continued to wander trying to find something important that was in the guidebook to make this stop somewhat worthwhile. After wandering aimlessly toward things that looked like they might be famous churches or monuments we finally found the largest church in Umbria. It was locked and we couldn’t go in though. And then we went up the other side of the street and found San Peitro another famous Perugian church. After those two sights we had given up on trying to find anything worth seeing and decided to find lunch and continue on our journey to Florence. As we looked for a place to eat, a pattern began to emerge, every place looked closed, or wasn’t serving pizza (the only reasonably priced thing on their menu). We finally found one place that looked busy we looked at the menu and walked in. The owner stood at the door and told us they were closed. It was so frustrating. We finally decided that the only place that could be open during this little siesta time was McDonalds, so that's where we went. It was probably one of the best decisions I’ve made. I had a cheeseburger and curly fries. It was amazing! After our little American indulgence we headed back to the train station and hopped on the train to Florence, which like all our other trains happened to be leaving 5 minutes after we bought our ticket. We ran to catch it and once we did, it was a nice 2 hour nap to Florence.