Popping to Perugia

Our trip to Assisi had been good, if a little warm, but I wasn't really in the mood for much more sightseeing that afternoon. Realistically there's only so much a normal person can take in about the Italian Renaissance in one day. When we arrived in Perugia we had to get the monorail into the town. The monorail carriages were basically sweatboxes and though I enjoyed whipping through the air, up to the town, I didn't enjoy everyone else doing it in my personal space.

After meeting with that stunning view when we alighted from the monorail, and headed into the main piazza and the tour began. Bree and Gaby were standing at the front of the party ready to absorb more pub trivia about Italian independence. It just so happened that I didn't want to learn these facts on a sunny Saturday afternoon when I was in the company of friends and shops. It just so happened as well that Lynette wasn't keen, and neither was her flatmate. Cue slightly awkward chat with Bree and Gaby when we divulge this information. They wanted to stay, we wanted to go - there was a very simple solution to this that it took a little too long to realise: they can stay, we can go. This is what we decided to do and we dropped out of the tour after the main piazza.

I don't know where we headed really. We ended up walking down and out of the walled town and into a more run-down residential area. Then again it's Italy, and it's beautiful wherever you go.

We headed down wherever it was we ended up via a number of interesting shops. I bought a banana and some harem pants, tried on some interesting sunglasses and a Valentino Rossi backpack, and had a little ride on a rocking horse before we hit the edge of town: that's my kind of sightseeing.

We started to wend our way back into town. We saw a side of Perugia that most tourists don't - not if all you do is wander round the big churches and the town hall.

This is the part of Italy that I just can't get enough of. Everyone's seen pictures of the famous places, but how many people get to see understated views like that one to my left?

When we discussed Assisi and Perugia later on, I chose Perugia as my favourite. Assisi had been far more spectacular, but Perugia was somewhere I could see myself living. It was the kind of town that had everything you'd want and then some.

We met up again as the sun was beginning to set and headed back down to the coach on the monorail. We got back to Camerino late that evening and I went straight to bed. The following day was a day off for me, Gaby and Bree had paid a little extra to go to Venice, but it was a long way away and in view of the fact I was going to be spending a year in Verona just down the road, I decided against this.

It would give me the chance for some much needed rest, and though things weren't necessarily uncomfortable after the incident with Bree and Gaby in Perugia, I was glad we could have a little break from it all.

Perugia, Italy, 2009