As you can see from the map, Perugia is South and East of Florence. It took the
train about 2 hours to get to Perugia from Florence. It would have been faster if there
was a Eurostar for this passage, but the best you get is a Regionale train, which stops
at just about every town on the way.
After I crawled out the sweaty train on a hot July day, I took a bus from the station
up to the old town. About 20 meters from the bus stop you can look south east
from the city and see this view.
Perugia has a main pedestrian street called Corso Vannucci. During the day the cafes
put out chairs and umbrellas and it's a great place to people watch and eat. Because the
old town of Perugia is built on a ridge, there are some very steep drop offs.
In this picture you can see how many of the houses spill off the upper part of the ridge
and flow in a terrocotta colored mass down to the right.
I walked to the highest part of the city that was publicy allowed and I could see the
most northern part of the old city that is a bit lower, but still surrounded by a
massive wall.
The top of a church peeks out between a tree and other shrubbery.
If you like walking through maze-like cobblestone streets with complicated
brick walls and edifices on either side ... then your going to love this place.
Going back to where the bus first dropped me off, I looked across the valley and
I could see one of the many hill towns of this region. This might be Assisi, but
I'm not entirely sure.
There were a number of interesting sculptures in Perugia. I saw many lions and
things that looked like griffins. Ontop of a large building, I saw this griffin.
I must have been about 20 feet from left to right.
I also liked this figurative sculpture of a woman who is in the center of a water
fountain.
The world cup soccer game played the same night I stayed in Perugia. The streets of Perugia were filled with people running around half naked with the flag of italy painted all over their bodies and celebrating the victory. There must have been 7 thousand people filling the main part of the old town and the party was still going strong when I went back to the hotel at 2:30AM.