June 4:

Saturday is a natural shopping day and Linda and Kay wanted to drive over to Spoleto to get in a little shopping. Nothing specific, they just said they would know it when they saw it.















It didn't take them long to find just the right shops walking up the main street. There was a wine tasting festival in progress so lots of purple balloons and people walking around with wine glasses in special holders slung around their necks.

This is what shopping looks like from a guy's perspective. Things don't change no matter what country you're in.







As we walk around the town we see interesting streets and photogenic scenes.

Putting buildings on hills and leaving them there for centuries makes for some lovely pictures. Its just hard to get to them. A lot of our walking is up or down. We don't do much walking on level ground.






After looking at several menus, we decide on a lovely, upscale cafe with outside seating. We knew it was upscale because it had a very nice bathroom with terry cloth towels.

Wine is at every meal except breakfast and is served in many different containers. We always ask for the local or house wine and consistently get good stuff. At this cafe, it was a local Umbrian Merlot. Not anything like the Merlots in the States. Very smooth and everyone liked it.

It is the custom on these trips to Umbria to go out to dinner one night at the Ristorante Rigugio S. Gaspare and tonight was the night. Everyone comes and we convoy with six cars up to the top of one of the highest mountains around. I don't know the elevation but it was a good 30 minutes of driving steep grades and very sharp switchbacks in the rain.

The place looks like a hunting lodge from the outside and a large open fireplace dominates the dining room. All the meat is cooked on the open fire. 

Our places are set and the wine and water arrives almost as soon as we sit down.

Along with some wonderful freshly

baked bread and fresh meat and cheese to slip inside of it to be eaten like a sandwich.

This is Jerry and Janis, our hosts.

The chef comes by to check on us and make sure we're eating enough.

When Jerry made the reservations he told them that Linda and Kay needed non-gluten dishes and they did a superb job of giving them special bread, brushetta, and pasta. I've never seen such attentiveness.
We are served too many courses. After the bread came fava beans, pasta with some kind of green, olive oil dressing, followed by gnocchi, three kinds of meat (sausage, pork, and lamb) from that open fire. Then, in true European style, a salad. Dessert was a custardy tiramisu - kind of soupy, not firm. All that was followed by a bottle of grapa and one of lemoncello. And then coffee. I passed on each because I had to drive down the mountain. Damn it.

All of this for 31 euros apiece. I call that a bargain for 2 1/2 hrs of really good eating.

When we leave, we immediately take a wrong turn out of the parking lot, up a very rutted gravel road for 100 meters and then perform a very difficult U-turn. At the end of the trip, we miss our driveway and turn too soon. I guess we were tired. Not drunk, just tired and really, really full.