Civitavecchia - Perugia

Back on the beautifully painted in Looney Tunes theme ferry of MOBY, I leave Sardinia behind for the port of Civitavecchia, North of Rome. On the deck I am about to start sweating on a rather warm day while countless dogs make too much noise, enough to annoy even Italians. Some of them poo as well. This brilliant experience escorts my terrible piadini that failed to satisfy my hunger. 5 and a half hours later this wonderful scene comes to an end as we reach our destination.

The heat goes on, I wear only my summer motorcycle jacket on top and start making my way to my next destination: Perugia. First 60 km are quite pleasant but I see dark clouds gathering ahead so I stop to put my rain gear on. This proved to be a wise choice shortly after as rain started falling but what followed this intro is hard to describe. I soon find myself driving on a pool that once used to be a road with nearly zero visibility and lots of traffic around me. Very strong wind while it rains dogs and cats. Some car drivers pull over, others put on their hazard blinkers and I continue my way with the hope that a phenomenon of such intensity probably won't last that long wishing I could either pass it or it would stop sometime soon. Neither happened so I stop at a filling station to re estimate the situation. Dark clouds everywhere, persistent strong wind and heavy rain. I waited a bit for the wind to calm down at least and as soon as it did I put myself on the bike again to ride in rain.

As I reach Perugia my gps app insisted in directing me to a non existing road as I was trying to reach my AirBnB resulting in me doing countless times circles around Perugia under rain while this city is cut in two by a train line minimising the alternative routes. On top of this you have Italians driving fast in their cars, tailgating me on roads with grip equal to a soaped marble. Just to give you an idea, I could make my bike tail happy despite all the weight of my luggage on uphills with 3d and sometimes even 4th gear!. A "slippery when wet" situation but not even close to the joyful versions of it.

I finally arrive in one piece where my smiley AirBnB hosts welcome me. Very nice guys attending the local university. Not sure the owner of their apartment would have the same idea when he/she would realise they put one of their rooms on AirBnB. I definitely had a not so good idea about the weather next morning. 9C with fog!

As soon as it cleared up a bit I went out to walk the city like snails come out after rain. Those historic centers of the cities of Umbria with all these medieval buildings is a guaranteed pleasure. Perugia is no exception. The bright day that followed the morning gloom helped a lot.

Beauty in cramped areas:

But also in the less cramped ones:

A bride waits:

Another bride arrives in a beetlie:

A few panoramics:

And...I guess you'd like some more:

I had a break at "Parco Pescaia" full of those "Aesculus Hippocastanum" trees:

I return to my AirBnB knowing that another long trip of mine was coming to an end as the only thing left to do was to drive up to Ancona next morning to catch the ferry back to mama Hellas. At night all my hosts were out except one and as I was starving I asked her if she could order some food for me since I was too tired to go out again. Instead she was kind enough to cook for me so we share her dinner and a nice chat as well.

After one ferry and some more hundreds of km I find myself back home starring at some leftovers of my 3000km and 3 weeks long trip:

If you want the map of (roughly) the whole trip click here

At this point I want to thank you so much for following, reading and supporting. See you (pretty soon) on the next one(s) 🙂