Sybilla Oritur

PhD Comics, one of my favourite web comics, is running a great series on the adventures of thesis-land. Yesterday was QUITE a day, preceded by a day more arduous and today - it wouldn’t look much better if i weren’t being compensated for three hours of editing a French student’s paper for our French Revolution [...]

I’ve had to institute a rule with respect to visits to The Book Thing of Baltimore. Only the number of books i drop off can be taken away. I am always enthralled by which authors show up the most: Le Carre, Mitchener, Grisham. Although DR was looking for a copy of Walden, we did not [...]

This week-end, i spent quite a bit of time (and money) picking up food items for my teeny little kitchen. On the menu for the week is chicken soup, a black bean, corn, pineapple and shrimp salad (recipe forthcoming), lentil loaf and another inauguration of last week’s granola bars. Friday i took the free Collegetown [...]

August 1-2, 2009: Beginning the Goodbyes
Saturday morning I had an appt at Prima Sole, a beauty salon recommended to me by Giulia from Rosso e Vino – I was apparently their first Canadian customer ever. Freshly defuzzed, I climbed back to San’Angelo, my favourite tanning spot in the entire city, and enjoyed some sun’s rays [...]

July 31, 2009 – Orvieto

Although Orvieto is a relatively short distance from Perugia as the crow flies, to get there by train is a two-hour ordeal lengthened by a required transfer at Cordona. This made us decide to plan our trip on a weekday, when trains are more frequent, and we still had a transport [...]

July 26-29, 2009< br/>
On Sunday we woke up early, stopped at McDonald’s for breakfast (yes, McDonald’s – they are better here and still very convenient even if in this non-breakfast culture we ended up having ham and cheese sandwiches and some cut-up peaches and nectarines), and took the train to Arezzo. On the way there, [...]

June 23-25, 2009

Thursday is cleaning day – and it’s a good thing as our landlord dropped by for a visit on Thursday evening after being a sweetheart again and taking us out for dinner at a local agriturismo where we were stuffed with black truffle gnocchi, roast veal and lamb and homemade cantucci (cookies). I [...]

June 22, 2009
It feels a little odd to attempt to write a travellog about my excursion to Spoleto yesterday given that there was a motorcycle accident which took the life of Alberto, our favourite barman at the often-mentioned cafeteria which I had been visiting every day. Sunday night we had sat talking for about thirty [...]

July 18, 2009

We are very lucky to have such a great landlady who decided to take us touring her favourite spots between Perugia and Spello on Saturday.
We told Jacqueline all about our previous day’s trip to Assisi – and she was unwilling to let us miss Santa Maria Maggiore – the church where St. Francis [...]

June 16-17, 2009
After a Thursday of house-cleaning and Latin, we decided to head to Assisi on Friday to let loose a little in this pilgrimage town. Little did we know that the day would be one of 37 degree heat and intense sunshine – but even as we wilted like proverbial flowers, there was still [...]