After Warsaw, I headed to Italy to meet my parents! We met up in the airport in Rome and drove straight out into the countryside. I’ve been to Italy once before, with my cousin Megan, and the two of us did a very on-the-beaten path itinerary – Rome, Florence, Venice, Cinque Terre, Pompeii, Pisa. It was such a cool trip, and it was all of the places in Italy I’d always heard about. So this time, I took advantage of the fact that I’d already gone to the well-known areas and I planned an itinerary that was away from all the crowds. We were focused on one thing: finding good food.
For the first day, I wanted us to get away from the airport and the city right away, so we headed to Bracciano. It’s about 45 minutes from the airport, in the direction we were going, and I thought it would be a good balance of easing into the driving but still going somewhere more interesting than the area around FCO!
Despite trying to ease into the driving, my parents were a little overwhelmed at first with the experience of the Italian roads. The drivers can be pretty aggressive, and the narrow streets in the towns can make it more challenging to drive than the US. Nonetheless, we made it, and we found a nice place in town to grab a light dinner.
We stayed at the Hotel Villa Clementina, which was so charming, and they cooked us a beautiful breakfast before we headed out the next morning into Umbria! When we finished up with breakfast, we headed out to our next stop, Oriveto.
Orvieto was beautiful. It’s at the top of a hill, so we parked and then took a series of escalators up to the old town. From there, there are so many twisty medieval streets to explore. We went in a lot of local shops and stopped for lunch. One of the things that I love about Italy is the al fresco dining – it can be hot there, especially in the summer, but in the shade and with a breeze, it’s so pleasant to eat outside for every meal. We also saw the outside of their famous cathedral, although we didn’t end up going in.
From there, it was on to the main event! My mom has always had a dream of staying in a castle somewhere in Europe, and this trip seemed like the perfect place to do it. I found one near Perugia, called Castello di Monterone, and we stayed there for a couple nights.
It felt pretty magical to stay at a castle! It’s the kind of thing that you imagine when you’re reading fantasy books or learning about the history of royals. It had beautiful grounds, including a garden and an courtyard where we sat and had some drinks and some snacks. That first night, we had dinner at the restaurant at the castle, which was delicious.
The next day, we headed off on a tour. This was something I was super excited about – we did a cooking class and wine tour! We started at someone’s home for the cooking class, which was pretty amazing. Megan and I had done one in Tuscany, as a day trip from Florence, so it was cool to get the chance to compare and contrast. Italy has so many different regional culinary traditions. I think you could take classes all across the major cities and get unique experiences each time. I made pasta in both classes, but the one in Tuscany was flour and egg-based and this one was semolina and water-based. After we learned how to cook the pasta, the woman teaching the class showed us all the different ways it could be shaped, which was incredible. She could take a spoon and make it into some sort of perfect corkscrew that I can’t imagine being dextrous enough to shape. We made eggplant and stuffed peppers and pasta with asparagus and chicken, and for dessert there was tiramisu. It was so good!
From there, we headed to a winery for a tasting. The woman at the winery was so knowledgeable, and taught us all about Umbrian wine and the different regions across Italy. We got to try a lot of different varieties, and even got some to drink back at the hotel! It was such a good day. And the next day, we headed off to our next adventure – a whole different country, San Marino!