Getting to Umbertide

At the end of the Soriano trip, we went in two rental cars to Umbertide.  Emily was to follow Margaret and me, and she had a GPS.  We also had Waze for a GPS, but only needed it for getting out of Soriano.  There was also a GPS on the car's control panel, but I had trouble programming it.  On Waze, I missed the first recommended turn, but Emily turned off behind us.  When I found the correct way out, I figured that  Emily was ahead of us, and checked if any Opels we saw ahead of us might be hers.  Eventually I saw that the car behind us was an Opel.  As we were on the Terni-Perugia superstrada, with several sections diverting traffic to two-way traffic on one side, at the end of one of these I exited to a service station for a pit stop, the Opel followed us, and it was indeed Emily.  Now we were confirmed to be able to stay together, with occasional vehicles cutting between us.  As we got close to Umbertide, we got a phone call from my longtime friend Graziano asking if we could meet him at the gas station where his nephew works as we got into town.  I said no to that, and he said he'd meet me as we got to the house.

When we got to the small piazza near the house, there was only a parking place for our car: while Margaret went with the key to open the house, I rode with Emily to find a parking place for her car.  As we walked back, there was Graziano approaching, and he was there just as we were first getting into the house.  We had a nice mix of catching up and trying to settle in. We found the house in good shape, after friends had put new beds and mattresses in.  For dinnertime, with our go-to restaurant the Capponi having closed, in order to walk to dinner we went to the Appennino and had a traditional Carbonara.

For the next day, Emily was glad to stay in Umbertide and see the small historic center.  For dinner, we drove slightly out of town to the nice Poggio Manente resort, for what, with the trip rescheduling, was the fourth meal that in some way was called my birthday meal.  It included risotto with truffles.

On Saturday, after a brief stop at the farmers' market, it was time for Emily to drive away and catch her return flight.  Since then, we've mostly been relaxing at home and dealing with a few matters with the house.