Kait's Adventures: Umbria with Daniele's Cousins

Daniele's mother is from Umbria, the region east of Lazio (were Rome is). Her sister never left and still lives in the house where they grew up. She has three sons a bit older than Daniele and his brother that are each married. The oldest two each have a daughter about 15 and a son about 7 years old. I met this whole side of the family last year and adored them! Unfortunately they are about two hours away from us in Rome.

We've been trying for a while to organize a day with Daniele's cousin Massimo, his wife Catia, and their children Sara and Diego. It is hard because everyone involved works shifts (Daniele is a nurse, Massimo a factory manager, and Catia a police officer) so it's not like we can just pick a weekend, or even the first weekend Daniele has off. This day worked out because they were on vacation. In the summer most Italians take vacation. They were spending theirs between Catia's family beach house, which coincidentally is right by Daniele's parent's beach house, and her family house were she grew up in Volperino. The latter is where we met up with them.

Cousins Daniele, Sara, and Diego

Their house in Volperino is a lovely large independent house on a large lot. Dare I say “villa”? The town is up in the mountains and a beautiful place to escape the heat of Rome. It is a such a nice place. Everyone in town knows each other. In fact the neighbors stopped by randomly throughout our two day stay there.

The town itself was damaged significantly by the 1997 earthquake. Italian houses are built differently than ours, from stone, and are expensive and time consuming to repair. It can take decades to build a house and obviously these people can not stay homeless that time. Most moved away, some have RVs on their property. 15 years later it is still a town under construction and the population is much lower, especially in the winter.

Only one wall is left from this house.

When we first got there, the kids were still sleeping because they had been out dancing till 2am the night before. Everyone in town goes to the bar (coffee shop) every night. We went later that night.

Catia made us lunch. After we lounged under almond trees to pass the afternoon heat. Daniele and I went to Nocera Umbra before dinner and when we came back his aunt and uncle were there, too. As well as some other people I was never introduced to (Italians do not automatically introduce everyone present). After dinner, we all walked to the town bar (coffee shop) where everyone in town was there hanging out all night long. The younger kids played hide and seek, the older ones foosball and ping pong, the elderly played cards, some adults played bocce ball, and everyone else just hung out.

Almond tree at Catia and Massimo's house

Monday Daniele and I had the best of intentions to take a morning hike with Massimo, but just didn't wake up early enough. So we took an easier walk with Sara and Diego that was more eating road-side blackberries than it was hiking. We hung out for the morning and early afternoon before setting off to Spoleto and home.

Sara knew all the best blackberries

Blackberry bush

Sunday we saw smoke in the distance that appeared to be a wild fire. It was just behind the rolling hills, so we could not see the flames to be sure. After a while there were helicopters and planes that dropped water, it was out the next morning. Catia said there have been a lot of them. Sure enough, Monday we saw another in the other direction. Daniele and I saw it closer up on the way home, but we also saw lots of other burnt patches of hillside. I hadn't known wildfires were such a problem. Apparently it is always an issue in dry forest areas in Italy, especially this year with the droughts.

Wild fire near Trevi, Umbria

While we were out in Umbria, Daniele and I made some trips to see some new places. Sunday we went to the little town of Nocera Umbra. Fun thing about Nocera Umbra is it sounds a lot like “No c'era ombra” or more correctly “Non c'era ombra” which means “There was no shade”. The translation has nothing to do with the name of the town, but it did confuse the heck out of me when I was first hearing it.

The town was cute and small. They were also still reconstructing from the damage of the 1997 earthquake. Most of the places we saw in the area were, with large cranes propped up to the mountain top towns. They had a museum of torture, which I was interested in, but not enough to pay the 5 euro (or 10 for Daniele and I) entrance fee. As we were leaving we saw part of a Ballet Recital going on in the square by the door to the city. It was adorable!

View from the top of Nocera Umbra

Monday we stopped at Spoleto on our way back to Rome. Spoleto is a much bigger city and features a castle / former prison on top and a 13th century bridge. Speleto is a perfect example of the medium sized town that I love in Italy. Not the big city like Rome or Florence, which are already big and constantly getting bigger as more people flock there for work. Not the tiny hill town that is almost abandoned as the houses crumble and young people flee to where they can get jobs or worse towns only being supported by tourism. This is a city with a large working class who mostly live just outside the city walls and a small tourism business to boot. Catia works in Spoleto and gave us great advice, to park by the escalators, take them all the way up (like 5 escalators), then walk down the city. The city offered a lot to see.