Norcia

As I have said elsewhere, I have much benefited from Thibault's meticulous planning for our breaks together - itineraries, accommodation, restaurants and bars. This holiday was much more last minute than any of our previous trips together, and so restaurants had tended to be found out here rather than from home weeks in advance. But that didn't seem to affect the quality much. 

Thibault chose Norcia for the hiking, and because it was an attractive town in Umbria with a reputation for high quality restaurants. All of which was true. Once. What Thibault hadn't picked up online was that Norcia had been devastated by an earthquake in 2016. Most of the houses seem to have survived, but the churches in particular were more rubble than anything else. (If an Act of God then it was clearly an own goal.) I don't think I have seen as much scaffolding in one place as here. So many buildings seem to have a metallic exo-skeleton.

All this clearly had an effect on tourist numbers. Admittedly we were out of season and of course there is a pandemic. But while many main squares in the towns we visited were not exactly thronged with people....

...well this one was thronged with, er, Thibault

That is not to say there was anything awful about staying here. I actually enjoyed wandering around the mostly deserted little town. Which is quite picturesque.

But it did, shall we say, have a deleterious affect on our restaurant choice. As it turned out, there were only two restaurants open, and we had two nights here so we tried them both. Indeed we tried another across town which looked open, but was in fact closed, which we only realized on reaching it in the middle of a torrential rainstorm.

What the town is especially known for is its salami, and there were a number of shops desperately trying to sell us the stuff.

This is the little place we stayed in - perfectly nice and more than adequate for our needs. Honestly I would recommend the town for a stay, but maybe wait until it gets rebuilt.

Also, slightly bizarrely the place was lit up at night, as if with incredibly early Christmas decorations.

But for all the limitations on the number of restaurants to choose from, nevertheless the one went to on our last night kept very well to our tradition of having an especially slap up meal to end our trip. Yum.