Spello’s Warm Embrace

​Aboard the train and eager to begin the next phase of this road trip.  Italian trains are so amazing how they accommodate cyclists so effortlessly.  

We unload our bikes and start pedaling into Foligno’s historic center.  It is a town where few tourists venture for reasons I don’t quite understand.  It holds great appeal to me.  The historic center is massive full of amazing palazzos churches and monuments.  Not a tourist trinket store to be found anywhere. It is also relatively flat so a lot of the population young and old ride bicycles.  

Upon our arrival to Spello, we park our bikes in a shady piazza and reach out to our Airbnb host. She couldn’t get to us right away which was fine with us as we were very hungry and it gives us time to make some new acquaintances.  Two elderly men and two elderly women sit down near us.  There are fruit and nut trees on either side of the piazza and there is one covered with fruit that kind of look like a pear.  So I decide to ask the man sitting close to me what they are.  He tells me the name and then one of the old women jumps up and starts picking them to give to us to eat.  Although not particularly sweet they are good. 

Then the conversation is unleashed.  Giovanni introduces himself and then starts asking us questions and much to my astonishment I can understand some of what he says and even more astonishing I can even answer his questions and form some rudimentary questions to ask him!  

We talk for awhile.  The ladies join in.  One lady starts picking and filling her pockets with almonds after giving us one to show us what it is.

When it was time for us to leave and meet our host.  One of the ladies called me over to her and grabbed my hands and said, Ti aspettiamo.   We await for you. The other ladies did the same.  It nearly brought me to tears.