The last full day in tuscany, we visited Perugia in Umbria. it too is on a side of a hill, but since its the capital of the region, its well organized to move people around. there is a mini-metro, which i was super excited to see, and did not get to. only bummer of the trip. but there is also a huge set of underground escalators that take you up to the top of the hill, through old underground tunnels, which is super cool. so anyways, here we go with some pictures
first set of elevators still in open air
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a cool looking building
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This is the underground that you come up into at the end of the escalators.
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a fountain at the top of the hill
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the main pedestrian walkway towards the main square.
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so as i previously mentioned, i was starting to get a little “uninterested” in seeing old and historic stuff. so instead i decided to focus on photography and see what interesting things i could capture.
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lion
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i was doing a lot of people watching so when i saw this, i thought it was pretty great.
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and of course i photographed all the family as they were strolling around
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i like it when theres plants growing where they shouldn’t be.
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sightseeing
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this was such a cute puppy
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happy baby
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of course an ice cream break
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and back at the scenic lookout took the opportunity for some more photos
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scenic view
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family photos
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so we had eaten lunch by this point, but we wanted to head back slowly, so i plotted a possible scenic route, and we went. as soon as we started on the scenic route we saw this. totally worth it.
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and then it was about an hour of driving up and down mountains and seeing small italian villages. it was super nice. i think getting off the main highways and just soaking up the countryside is totally worth it.
we also kept seeing all these beware of deer crossing signs the whole trip, but never saw a single deer. so we started calling them invisible deer. and then we saw a sign for both invisible deer and invisible cows, which were a little less invisible than the deer.
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back at home, we had planned to make a dinner at the villa the last night. there was a pizza oven, and so i wanted to give it a try, seeing as that eventually i want to build a pizza oven myself, and it seemed like a fun experience while in italy.
here is the pizza oven after i cleared all the ash out of it
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noa preparing the pizza sauce
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so i got a fire going inside
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while that was going on i toasted some bread in order to make bread crumbs.
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good looking charcoal
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and what the final pizza, mine, after remembering ohh shoot, i have to get a picture of a pizza too, looks like.
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now here is the thing about pizza ovens. you need proper pizza handling tools to start with. a good broom, coal pusher, and something to pull the pizzas out with. i had none of those. all i had was standard fire tools, so all the handles were too short, and i was having to do things in real quick increments so i would not burn my hands. not a good thing to begin with. after the fire had gone for 1.5-2 hours, the oven is super hot, but now you have to pull all the ash out. again, not an easy task. then you have to make sure theres no ash on the floor, so it doesn’t get on your pizza. this was the hardest part for me. BECAUSE of that, i didn’t realize you have to move the charcoal around as your baking. the oven stays at temperature, but the floor does not. so you bake 2 pizza’s on one side, move the charcoal over, and so forth. that way you always have a super hot floor and get a fast cooking time. like 4 min tops. the first pizza out did exactly that, and looked fantastic. by my 6th pizza, i was cooking for 15 min….. i knew something was wrong, but did not have the experience to trouble shoot it yet, and i was not willing to move the charcoal around as i couldn’t clean the floor properly.
so i think the picture of the pizza that was the last one out looks horrible. it was still tasty, but it did not have the nice gas bubbles you see from a quick fire pizza. but either way, it was still tasty, and a super fun experience. now i know better. have the proper tools in hand before…hand…?
and while all the pizza shenanigans were going on, i got a few final evening pictures from the villa. I think this one turned out best.
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so that was the final night in tuscany. next up is leaving tuscany and then rome for 3 nights.