Whenever people ask us why we love to go to Italy, I list several reasons, but Ken always says the food, and today was a perfect example of how our Italian life works.

Market day and it was just a street or two outside of Piazza Garibaldi, right near our place.  We walked through all the stalls; this is a much smaller market than many we’ve seen.  I noticed that the Christmas theme was hitting the plant vendors.

We found ourselves at the entrance to the escalators going to the duomo so we hopped on.  It was almost eerie to have the entire, terracotta, piazza duomo to ourselves. 

The interior of the duomo kept our interest for quite a while with its beautiful art works and side chapels.  One chapel is dedicated to this letter from St. Frances to his disciple Leo, encouraging him to keep on the path to God. (Translations were posted in several languages)

We walked around the duomo area a bit more and then took the escalators back down towards  the market, passing this path along a Roman wall.  

We got some vegetables to make a soup and 2 fabulous porchetta panini returned home.

After a bit of rest and lunch, I really wanted to find some real Umbrian olive oil—not the supermarket variety.  So, we took the moving walkway (a different one, right near our apartment) up to Piazza Mercato and popped into the alimentari there. 

 We got a nice small tin of new oil and some wine for dinner and walked around Piazza Mercato a bit.

Even though we are on the mechanized path, we still walk fast. Gotta get those steps!

All day long it seemed like it would rain any second but it never did.  Even when my weather app said it was raining, we stayed dry.  

Our soup came out great with potaotes and spinach from the market and the Caprai Montefalco Rosso (a blend of sagrantino and sangiovese) was really good.  I made us some toast to indulge in the oil and it was delicious, too.  The vegetarian meal suited me fine.

We are so hooked on Homeland that we watched two of them and went to bed.