Trip to Todi

Today we went to Todi, a little town in the province of Perugia, in Umbria region. We have these American friends, a recently retired couple, who have rented a three bedroom apartment in the center of Todi for 3 months. They kindly invited us to spend some time together and we couldn't say no.

We were planning to leave the house at 9 o'clock in the morning, but being a typical family with little kids of course we didn't manage getting on the road before 9:40.
There was some traffic but no queues on the highway, so it was fine, except for one idiot! He was driving a black BMW X5 and was trying to pass us from the right hand side, which, of course, is not possible, this is not England! My husband didn't let him pass and the idiot got mad! When it was possible we did change the lane and let him pass to our left, thinking that now he will go ahead on his road to hell leaving us in peace. We were wrong. He didn't pass us, but placed his car next to ours, VERY close to ours, dangerously close, and kept his speed equal to ours, blocking us behind a motorbike for a couple of minutes. This was not enough, he even drove ON to our car, forcing my husband to make a sharp motion towards the right, nearly out of the road! The idiot tried to push us out of the road, can you believe it???? And assuming that he was not blind, since he was given a driver's license, he must have seen the two little kids sitting in the back of our car, yet it meant absolutely nothing to him. After some time we somehow got in the left lane again, one car ahead of him, and when we could we came back to the right lane to continue in our own pace. This idiot came like a lightning out of the blue again and passed us at only millimeters' distance, so close to us and so fast that though our car is a huge SUV it shook with the wind of his BMW. Then he got lost in the distance... Everything lasted about ten minutes, but they were my worst ten minutes on the highways of Italy. I have sworn, and cursed him. I had taken his plate number but it is of no use. This is Italy, you NEVER find any police on the highways when you need them. And the streets and highways are full of idiots like the one we met this morning. I don't understand why they keep wondering about the reason of the huge number of accidents that happen in Italy every year. They should just watch themselves driving! It is obvious. They drive like maniacs.

Anyway... We did arrive at Todi around 11.15. We went to the apartment of our friends for a while. Then we went out to the narrow streets of the tiny town. It is a quite beautiful little medieval town with its stone buildings with thick walls, narrow streets, streets of tens of stairs, streets that suddenly open into a piazza, little and crowded restaurants, cafes on either side of the streets, flowers hanging down from the little balconies that open to the narrow stony streets, huge stone buildings with little shops squeezed one against the other... They took us to a typical restaurant and we ate very well, sipping our red wine from Umbria. I chose some long flat pasta with black truffles as my first dish. It was delicious! My second dish was a plate of entrecote cooked medium-rare and sliced, placed over a bed of fresh spicy rucola, and washed with the sweet-and-sour balsamic vinegar.. absolutely to make you lick your fingers. My favorite was my side-dish though. I ordered some eggplants prepared in a way that I had never tried before. They had sliced the eggplants in half a cm thick disks and then grilled them. Afterwards the eggplants were placed on a little plate. Over them there was some extra virgin olive oil. They were topped with toasted pine nuts and raisins (also the raisins were toasted). And on the very top there was a layer of freshly grated pecorino cheese. I recommend the eggplant lovers to try this recipe, definitely a winner.

Instead of eating some dessert at the same restaurant we preferred to go out and get ice-cream somewhere else. After a short walk and some rest at the apartment of our friends we got on the road home towards 5 pm.

Italy (but especially Tuscany and Umbria) is full of beautiful little towns that make the foreigners (Americans, Germans, and the others) fall in love and come back again and again. I should admit, they are right, it is a beautiful country.