Assissi to Foligno May 31

                                                          Current Day                                           Trip to Date

Miles Walked                                          9.3                                                      274.5

Feet Climbed                                         120                                                     31,760

Songs of the Day: Hells Bells by AC/DC or Ina Gadda da vida by Iron Butterfly:

Hells Bells

Hells bells, you got me ringing

Hells bells, my temperature's high

Hells bells

In a gadda da vida, honey
Don't you know that I'm lovin' you
In a gadda da vida, baby
Don't you know that I'lol always be true

As you can see from the stats, this was not a strenuous day.  We made an executive decision to take a taxi from Assissi to Foligno, then spent the day exploring Foligno. Before we started the trip,  I had read a couple of articles about what an interesting and charming place Foligno can be.  After spending the day exploring damn near every street and alleyway in Foligno, I can report that it sort of interesting, but not that charming.

You might be wondering why I chose two of the worst songs of all times for song of the day.  First, Hells Bells.  This song applies to both Assissi and Foligno.  Bells from the churches were going all night at both places.  In Assissi, the bells went off every 15 minutes for about 2 minutes each time!  In Foligno, a similar story- bells every 15 minutes from several different churches.  For a county where  time and timeliness are relative concepts, they sure are exacting about their church bells!  By the way, I think Starbucks must have taken their business model from the Catholic Church.  It seems that in every Italian city, there is a church every 2 blocks or so.  And they are all big, huge churches, with big noisy bells.  I can't imagine the upkeep and maintenance costs.

What about Ina Gadda da vida?  Some of the worst lyrics ever and that god awful drum solo!  Exactly!  One of the fun, but  ultimately maddening parts about our day in Foligno, was the big local festival happening on Sunday.  Like many Italian cities, Foligno is divided into neighborhoods.  And part of the festival's charm is that each of the neighborhoods has specific activities for their neighborhood.  Additionally, there is a competition between the neighborhoods around some activity.  Think about the Palio in Sienna, where the 13 neighborhoods compete in a horse race.  In Gubbio where we stayed 4 days ago, they have a huge festival on May 15 each year, capped off by a foot race between the neighborhoods.  Each neighborhoos has colored flags specific to their neighborhood.  Note the different colored flags on the two sides of this Foligno street, which is a dividing line between two neighborhoods:

At 8:30 Sunday evening, each of the neighborhoods hosts a large dinner for their people.  Here is one of the neighborhood dinners:  

It also turns out, each of the neighborhoods has its own drum and horn band....here is one of the bands warming up early in the evening: 

We thought this was all very quaint and almost charming....however, as were to later learn, the evening's activities are capped off by a band competition, which takes place in the large square in town.  Where our hotel was located....The competition started around 11 pm and lasted until after midnight.  As we had to get up early on Monday, we went to bed around 10:45, only to be awakened at 11 by the deafening beating of drums outside our windows.   All I could think about was that damn drum solo from Iron Butterfly...will it ever end?!

Yesterday seemed to be first confirmation day in Italy. We experienced something similar last year on the last Sunday in May.  Here is a photo of one of the churches letting out.  Note the kid in his white gown.  

We passed a stadium with a track, including a sort of figure 8. It was called "Campo Dei Giochi."  Does anyone know what the figure 8 would be used for?  Some sort of crazy crash car competition?  We have no idea, but would like to find out.  

On Monday morning, we take a 3 1/2 hour train ride to our cooking school, which is about 50 miles south of Rome.  We have always enjoyed riding the  trains in Italy.  The big challenge on this one will be changing trains at the huge Rome station.  We only have about 12 minutes between trains.   

We are looking forward to a relaxing and interesting week at the cooking school.   Perhaps I need a new daily metric- instead of miles walked, I could devise some sort of food quality index?