Perugia

So we drove into Perugia -- another exciting adventure in Italian driving. Although we really needed a station wagon to haul bikes and stuff for 3 people, I am really beginning to regret the size of the beast we have. Some of the arches we have to pass thru are scarcely wider than the car, and some of the turns, including into the parking at our VRBO, simply cannot be done in one go. We keep getting ourselves into places we really don't want to be, even if the GPS thinks we do. When we find the public parking lot, we are so relieved we don't care what it will cost to get the car back out of hock when we are done being tourists (8.50 Euro, as it turns out).
From the corner of the parking lot, two escalators in succession take a lot of the pain out of the hilliness of this hill town. Still, there are more steps before we reach a real street. What strikes us first is how structures are piled upon structures to such an extent it is pretty much impossible to discern what the underlying terrain might look like. This city was first settled by the Etruscans in the third or fourth century BCE and has been inhabited ever since. It may be that only the ancient Etruscans know what lies below. It sure makes for photogenic (but hard to photograph) alleys, streetscapes, piazzas, and overlooks. We made our way to the Piazza IV Novembre (what is it with all these dates?) where the cathedral and the Palazzo dei Priori are separated by a bizarre medieval fountain. As it was getting late, we declined to spend almost 20 Euro to go in the museum for only an hour or so, but it looks like a place to go back to. The cathedral has what is supposed to be Mary's wedding ring, although one sign seems to say this is a replacement after it was removed by someone who had the upper hand for a while. And even if it were the original, Mary would have had to have been about 10 feet tall and 500 pounds to wear anything that large. Under the eaves of the cathedral a very talented chorus of singers in ordinary street clothes started singing while we were in a nearby coffeeshop. We came out to hear the end of their concert and were quite impressed. I would love to know the words of the folk tune they sang as the middle of the three songs we heard. David recorded all three with his iThing, but they're a bit muffled.
We wandered around a bit looking for the Perugina chocolate shop, and when we found it, we were sorely disappointed. It was full of schlock at high prices, so while David and Nina picked out a few candies, I wandered outside and sat on the steps of the Palazzo. This afforded me a very nice view of a nun eating gelato with friends. She caught me photographing her and gave me a big smile. We stopped in a coop grocery store for supplies, then navigated back to the car with the GPS. We've found it very helpful to set a waypoint at the car before leaving it, else we'd still be wandering around looking for it in various cities we've been to.
We returned home and created a wonderful dinner of strozzapreti (strangled priest) pasta with pesto, supplemented by sauteed eggplant and onion for those of us who eat such stuff. Nina is really more of a carbohydrian than a vegetarian; pretty much all the standard vegetables available in an Italian market (eggplant, zucchini, tomatoes, radicchio) are on her no-go list.