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The next day after the long day and a half in Rome and trying to make it way out to the Villa the previous night, we weren’t in for too much running around but we still had a pretty strong desire to get out and see the country side, possibly see a little more of the real Italy. The Villa had 6 full bathrooms, so the twelve of us really didn’t take too long getting ready each day. My parents ran into one of the nearby, extremely small villages and grab some pastries and a few different juices. They really aren’t terribly into breakfast in a big way like many American’s are, but they go crazy with lunch and dinner. Many just have a small pastry and some coffee or something. So finding something for breakfast wasn’t the easiest. We all went out to the veranda (as seen in the top picture, just above the pool) which I mentioned in the first post about our Vacation in Italy.

We headed to a small town named Gubbio. When we found public parking, there was a small Roman theater, which is the second-largest surviving in the world. Many villages and towns were built on high ground (easy to defend), like mountainsides and hilltops. Gubbio was build on the fairly steep mountainside of Mt. Ingino, and it well represented the medieval period. All the buildings and roads were made from large cut, grey and red stones. It had skinny streets, and most of them were very steep.

The shops here were pretty amazing, people were really nice, and this towns specialty was pottery, clay work, and attractive waitresses. The small pizzeria we ate lunch at probably had the most attractive Italians I saw on my whole trip. Just walking around in these streets was quite breath taking because most of the people that live in the main section of town, live in homes which are still hundreds of years older than the Declaration of Independence. The majority of historical events in this town occurred between 1000 A.D and the 1300’s- and it still clings to it’s gothic architecture.

Another pretty awesome thing about this second day in Italy, was the plan we had to just randomly stop in at any castle we saw on the drive home since we were sticking to back country roads. We got lucky, and the owner of one gave us a quick tour. The Castle was complete with a watchtower, huge iron gate, creepy black cat, creepy old man and had been converted into a hotel and restaurant (and it still looked like people hadn’t been there since the 1400’s.)

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