It’s easy to understand why Umbria is called “The Green Heart of Italy.” A hundred miles north of Rome, the region is home to olive groves and rolling hills and valleys and fields of hay. It’s a checkerboard of green and brown, lush yet dry. The light is so strong you need sunglasses all the time yet it’s also quite soft. The first night a heavenly rainbow appeared at sunset. It was idyllic.
We’ve been staying in a beautifully renovated villa owned by our friends Kaila and Ludovico. They met when they were both in Australia. She was working for a company selling Italian wines. Ludo was designing and selling Italian kitchens. He, like Kaila, is full of life, smiling, laughing, fun to be around.
Kaila is the daughter of Jude, a friend from back home who ran the anesthesiology department at UVMMC until she died way too young of cancer six years ago. Kaila looks remarkably like her Mom, especially her big exhuberant smile. Kaila and Ludo walked down the aisle two months before Jude passed away. They moved to Italy — Ludo was raised in the northern part — and have an adorable daughter, Elly Lou, who’s a year and a half old. Jude was best friends with our friend Kathleen, who we traveled with here last fall and lives in South Hero.
Kaila and Ludo looked at dozens of villas before buying one about 40 minutes from Perugia, the region’s capital city. They spent about two years doing renovations to turn it into a bed and breakfast that has multiple units on two floors and can accommodate 10 to 14 guests. Families or groups of friends often rent out the whole place. Ludo said truckloads of dirt were removed to create the swimming pool. The villa is gorgeous with modern kitchens and spectacular views of the hills and valleys below and mountains off in the distance.
There has been a heat wave here (and back home) so we’ve spent a lot of time by the pool and taking short walks in the olive groves. Marina and Stella have shared an apartment. Lauren-Glenn and I have the adjoining unit. Every morning, bowls of fruit and pastry appear on trays under netting in our shared hallway for breakfast, which we’ve enjoyed together in our unit along with espresso for Marina and me and cappuccino for Stella. It’s been so great to have Stella here with us, our world traveler who radiates sunshine. She and I have spent a lot of time dishing by the pool. And we all had a lovely evening one night chatting with Kaila — she, Stella and Marina enjoyed some local Prosecco — before she headed off with the baby to the beach on the Adriatic for a few days of relief from the heat. Ludo stayed behind to greet new guests and work on the never-ending projects maintaining a villa requires! (though he gets help from three small robotic lawnmowers that patrol and traverse the grounds much of the day and night.)
Marina has been doing almost all of the cooking for lunch and dinner — pasta, veggies and salads and one night we had chicken. Her pasta is always perfectly cooked, al dente and never overdone and mushy like everywhere in the US. We had a fun trip to the region’s capital, Perugia, where we had lunch and toured a museum featuring art and sculptures dating back into the 1200’s. Lots of crucifixion depictions.
Our last night before heading back to Rome we had a lovely dinner at Macamuta, a restaurant in a nearby village that Kaila and Ludo recommended. We ate outside on a beautiful, plush lawn. The food was prepared family style — a big bowl of pasta with zucchini and anchovies topped with bread crumbs after a hearty plate of appetizers that included prosciutto and sausages, pate, a chick pea and fish spread, cheeses and other delicacies that the four of us couldn’t even finish. Stella also ordered a red sauce cannelloni. The meal was so filling and delicious we didn’t even have room for dessert!
The next morning we shared hugs with Ludo before heading to Rome where we’ll spend 10 days in the hills of Frascati — outside the ring road that surrounds Rome — in the same apartment we rented last fall, just a short walk to the quaint, hopping downtown and a 25-minute train ride to the city center.
Ciao for now.
Taksim to Tuscany 