Perugia

We went to Perugia yesterday. John needed to mail his manuscript back to Random House and we decided to make a day of it. It's actually our second time to Perugia, but last time it was so hot that we basically ate lunch and then went home in defeat. Yesterday was a much nicer day.

The old city center is up on top of a hill, and the rest of the city falls away on each side. They put in a monorail line so you can get from the train station to the top, but yesterday it was out of service for some reason (despite the mini cars still moving up and down the track empty), so we caught the bus. It drops you off at a tunnel entry and you wander through a medieval dark and spooky arcade underground until you arrive at some bright shiny escalators which take you up to the level of the city. In front of us was a family with an old dachshund on a leash. The dachshund clearly found the whole experience disturbing, his tail was tucked under, and he kept stopping and looking back. It was probably the noise of the echoes in those halls. They finally picked him up and carried him the rest of the way.

We enjoyed lunch and then John sat at an outdoor cafe to work while I visited the museum. If you like religious art, this is the museum for you. It has more Mary and baby Jesus images than I've ever seen under one roof. They set it up chronologically, which was great, as you got to see symbolic painting slowly replaced by perspective slowly informed by chiaroscuro. My favorites are the early perspective paintings, where they're still working out the vanishing points, and they're still trying to make sure the symbolically important people are larger than the others so you end up with minor bishops and such at the front looking like they're children. Hilarious.

Then we had falafel for a snack. Yum. It's not my favorite thing in the states, but 6 weeks of pizza and pasta, and it was ambrosia. The drawing of the griffin, Perugia's mascot, is from our first visit to the city. It was hot, I had to stand in an awkward place to draw it, and I don't love the drawing, but we didn't take any pictures, and despite visiting twice, I've never found anything else there I want to draw. Perugia is a pretty city, just not picturesque.