You put a Spello on me

Now, this was exactly what I needed. After a thrilling/exhausting/slightly-overwhelming week of Rome, this felt like the polar-opposite side of Italy, at least given my inability to get out to an honest-to-god Agriturismo (working farms that host visitors) in the countryside. Two days of relaxation, reading, and hiking with virtually no fellow Americans – a small miracle in Italy in June, it seems to me – this was restorative in all the ways I needed it to be. Video below and more after the jump!

I picked the town almost at random several months ago by flipping through a Rough Guide to Italy, and Google Image searching every hill town that merited a description. When I saw the streets of Spello I decided to jump in with both feet.

To the degree that the town is on the major tourist trails, it tends to be associated with the Infiorata, a huge display of floral mosaics on Corpus Christi. I arrived almost a month after the Infiorata, but the city was still in bloom… and under construction. A few major sections of the main thoroughfare were totally torn up, sending pedestrians over noisily creaking metal walkways. Oh, but once you got off to the side streets, it was lovely, as you can see below.

During first night in town, I had noticed references to a small village up in the hills that seemed to be a good half-day hike up and back. And I do mean small: a five-minute walk from edge to edge at best, with one restaurant and one café in its sleepy streets. This turned out to be a perfect hike: I started out by guesswork, as Spello’s tourist office (which provides hiking maps) was closed until 10 and I wanted to get on the trail early. A short meander down the road and I saw a footpath branching off to the side; taking it, I found an information board laying out the trail… most of which simply followed an ancient Roman aqueduct! COOL. A good two-hour hike up, a pause to read in a park in the village, lunch at the small restaurant (whose daily ingredients I had seen arriving from the park!) and a descent to Spello… this was very much what I needed. I will likely do some more hiking next week in Emilia-Romagna, but it was a good reminder that I need to balance the interest and engagement of city life with the pastoral joys of the countryside. Very excited to continue doing so.

Photos below – and next up, Florence! 

Um, so there are lots of flowers in the streets of Spello. Like... more than you'd expect to see in a street. Here are some of them! Hooray for flowers??

MORE IMPORTANT THAN FLOWERS EVERYTHING IN THIS WINDOWSILL IS GOOD AND NICE

The famous Tiny Trucks of Umbria!

Blah blah the Italian countryside blah blah hill towns blah blah zzzzz

Dusk falls on the edge of Spello

Dusk hits the ground hard, curses under its breath, and rubs its elbows. "I think I sprained something," Dusk mutters, not that anybody cares. Not that anybody is listening. Dusk doesn't even know why it bothers any more. "Why don't you go look at some flowers, idiots," Dusk huffs.

Oh hey that's a view on the way out o' Spello, huh.

Skipping the hike itself (which is in the video above), here's a li'l view from the end of the hike! This village was: ADORABLE.

Back in Spello, at a monastery (not open to the public). I am beginning to realize that easily 50% of the photos I take are mostly to capture blue skies and/or clouds. Hm.