Let’s face it: times are tough. We are all tightening our belts a little, trimming the fat, and watching our pennies. That said, a trip to Umbria may be more do-able than you think. Here are some suggestions to help keep your dream trip within reach (and without sacrifice!).
Photo by Julien Jorge
Time It Right
By choosing a low or “shoulder” season (those buffer months between high and low season), you will be more likely to find deals on flights, accommodations, and car rentals. This doesn’t mean you are stuck with the dog-days of January; shoulder season for Umbria generally includes the months of March (and some or all of April) and November (and some or all of October). The weather is, of course, spottier than it would be at the height of summer, but generally has cool, crisp days interspersed with some showers…and gets steadily warmer and sunnier the further you push forward into April or back into October. Bring clothes you can layer, and make sure you have both indoor and outdoor sights on your itinerary so you can work around anything the weather might toss at you.
Aim Low to Fly High
With a little time and patience, there are good deals to be scored on airline tickets. Time, patience, and a little bit of knowledge, that is. For an overview on how to play the cheap airfare game, a good place to start is here. Once you have a handle on how to work the system, stop by the new Airfares & Airlines Forum at Slow Talk (the Slow Travel forum), where there is an ongoing conversation going on with travellers about where, how, and when to find the best prices on tickets…and a specific thread to compare what others have paid for their flights. Remember that to fly to Umbria, you have a number of airport options to comparison shop: Perugia, Rome, Florence, Ancona, and (in a pinch) Pisa are all feasible. Perugia has discount European carrier RyanAir flights from London Stansted, so another option is to purchase a ticket to London and connect with a dirt-cheap intra-European London-Perugia flight (make sure you read RyanAir’s infamous baggage restrictions carefully!).
Stay in a Vacation Rental
Okay, anyone who has spent any time on this blog knows that I don’t shill very often, so bear with me while I do here. A vacation rental can be a great budget choice, both for the simple price advantage (Figure Brigolante’s rates average to less than €80/night in high season, which is €40/night per person for a couple and €20/night per person for a family of four. To put it bluntly, the Assisi campground charges more.) and for the added advantage of a kitchen to prepare meals and laundry facilities. When the timing is right, we also offer our guests free access to our vegetable garden and eggs, wine, and olive oil all year long. You do the math.
This view is free!
Get Cookin’, Good Lookin’
While we’re on the subject of the advantages of a vacation rental, let’s talk food. One of the biggest budget crushers when travelling is the cost of eating out three times a day, every day. If you have access to a kitchen, you can dramatically cut down your restaurant expenditures by cooking at home and preparing picnics to take along on day trips. If you’re worried about missing out on Umbria’s fabulous regional cuisine, don’t fret. Traditional Umbrian cooking is very simple–yet hearty–fare founded more on fresh, local ingredients than fancy preparation techniques. Take the time to wander through the region’s farmers’ markets, local butchers, specialty cheese, fresh pasta, and bread shops and pick up a little culture along with your dinner ingredients.
Sometimes The Best Things in Life are Free
Umbria is a particularly budget-travel friendly destination because so many of its sights are free of charge. The lion’s share of her major artworks are in chuches, which are largely open free to the public. Much of the region’s charm is in simply wandering the streets of its numerous medieval stone hilltowns, taking scenic drives through the rolling landscape, and walks in one of the region’s parks. A stroll through sleepy Spello, a drive along the Nera river, gazing upon the iconic frescoes in the Basilica of Saint Francis, watching the sun set over Lake Trasimeno, a picnic on Mount Subasio: all unforgettable moments in Umbria that won’t cost you a cent.
The best things in life...
Cheap Thrills
Here is a bucket list of money saving tips for Umbria:
Purchase a Perugia Città Museo Card: €10/person buys you access to any five of thirteen local museums, monuments, and archeological sights for 48 hours from your first use, €20 (€35 for a family of up to four) buys you access all thirteen local museums, monuments, and archeological sights for a full year from your first use. A good deal.
Other cities in Umbria have similar discount card options (for example Spoleto and Assisi), which can be deals if you intend on visiting the participating museums and monuments. For more information, contact the Tourist Info offices.
The Ministry for Art and Culture has periodic discount days for State museums and monuments across Italy. Around Valentine’s Day (for 2011 it’s 12 and 13 February), museums offer two tickets for the price of one. On 8 March, all women enter free to celebrate Women’s Day. And during the annual Culture Week (9-17 April in 2011), all State-owned museums, monuments, and archaeological sites are open free of charge.
Many music festivals offer some free concerts during their program (Umbria Jazz, for example, has free concerts in the public Giardini Carducci). See here for suggestions.
A great time to visit an Umbrian town is during their annual festival, which often includes costumed processions, concerts, crossbow tournaments and medieval reinactments open to the crowds. Just a walk through the town, all decked out with banners and flags and saturated with an air of celebration, makes for some wonderful memories.
Trawl for car rental deals with the same attention as airfare deals. I am a huge proponent of renting a car in Umbria, and, with some attention to detail, it is possible to shave quite a bit off your car rental price.
Groupon. Yes. Don’t make that face. Groupon is divided by city in Italy (as it is elsewhere), so you can register for Perugia to see what local deals are coming through the pipe. I admit that many won’t be of much interest to the average traveller (unless, of course, you are looking to get your teeth cleaned in Umbria), but there are often discounts on restaurant meals, accommodations, and spa treatments. You will have to sort through the Italian, but with a little work most offers are easily decipherable.
The toughest trial the newly-minted expat has to endure is that clunky, awkward, square-peg-in-round-hole exercise of superimposing one’s own largely culturally dictated belief system on that of one’s new host culture, and–with a little cutting and pasting, giving and taking, conceding and demanding– cobbling together a new one.
Okay, the second toughest trial. The first is, of course, bagel withdrawal.
When it works (a fun story of when it works), the exercise is an alchemy of skimming the cream off the top of both cultures and creating something greater than the sum of its parts. When it doesn’t work, it produces the Bitter Expat…the one who does nothing but harp on the host culture at dinner parties, boring fellow expats with tales of woe and offending locals with claims of how everything is bigger, better, and faster in one’s home country.
Puravive Reviews has been making waves in the health and wellness industry with its unique approach to maintaining a healthy lifestyle. The Exotic Rice Method, as advertised by Puravive, has gained significant attention for its supposed benefits. However, as with any new health trend, skepticism and curiosity abound. In this article, we’ll delve into Puravive reviews to determine whether the Exotic Rice Method is genuine or just another health fad.
The Exotic Rice Method: What Is It?
The Exotic Rice Method is the flagship program offered by Puravive, a company that claims to harness the power of exotic rice varieties to improve health and well-being. According to Puravive, these rice varieties are sourced from far-flung regions and are exceptionally nutrient-dense. They are said to possess the potential to enhance metabolism, support weight loss, and boost overall health.
Puravive offers this program in various formats, including dietary supplements, meal plans, and informational materials. The company suggests that by incorporating these unique rice varieties into your daily diet, you can experience numerous health benefits.
Customer Reviews: The Real Story
To get a better understanding of the Exotic Rice Method, we examined customer reviews from various sources. Here’s what we found:
Mixed Opinions
Customer reviews are generally mixed. Some users report experiencing positive results, including improved energy levels, weight loss, and enhanced digestion after following the Exotic Rice Method. However, others express disappointment, claiming they didn’t notice any significant changes.
Weight Loss Claims
A substantial portion of the customer reviews focuses on weight loss. Some individuals claim to have shed pounds successfully, attributing their success to the Exotic Rice Method. It’s important to note, though, that individual results can vary widely, and factors such as overall diet, physical activity, and genetics also play a role in weight loss.
Health Benefits
Several users report improvements in their overall health, such as better digestion, more regular bowel movements, and increased energy levels. However, these claims are anecdotal and not supported by scientific studies.
Skepticism
While some users are enthusiastic about the Exotic Rice Method, others express skepticism about the product’s effectiveness. Many people are cautious about the lack of scientific evidence and the high price of Puravive’s offerings.
Expert Opinions
We also sought insights from nutrition and health experts to get a more balanced perspective on the Exotic Rice Method. Most experts caution against relying solely on exotic rice varieties for health benefits, emphasizing the importance of a balanced diet and a healthy lifestyle.
Many nutritionists highlight the need for more research and scientific evidence to support the claims made by Puravive Reviews. The absence of such evidence raises concerns about the legitimacy of the Exotic Rice Method.
The Verdict
As of now, it is difficult to definitively label Puravive’s Exotic Rice Method as either fake or legitimate. Customer reviews are mixed, and the lack of scientific evidence leaves room for skepticism.
If you are considering trying the Exotic Rice Method or any of Puravive’s products, it’s essential to consult with a healthcare professional and conduct your own research. Keep in mind that no single product or dietary plan can guarantee success, and a balanced approach to nutrition and wellness is key.
In conclusion, while the Exotic Rice Method may offer some potential benefits, its effectiveness and legitimacy are still open to debate. It’s always wise to approach such health trends with caution and to consult experts for personalized advice on maintaining a healthy lifestyle.
I moved to Umbria as a vegetarian. Luckily, not a new vegetarian, so I had shed the holier-than-thou affect of the newly converted, but a vegetarian nonetheless. Umbria is a region of meat eaters. Not only meat eaters, but meat raisers and meat butcherers. This traditional, rural area still has vast swaths of farmland where the turn-around time between barnyard and dinner table is a few hours at most. Though older Umbrians remember a diet based largely on grains and legumes (flavored with pork fat and charcuterie) with meat reserved for special occasions or, for the more prosperous, Sundays, the steadily climbing standard of living over the past two generations means that meat has become a mainstay of the local diet.
The sight of fresh homemade sausages hung to dry warms the cockles of any Umbrian’s heart.
That said, the modern regional cuisine continues to reflect the poor hunting and farming culture that dominated Umbria for millenia with its heavy use of game (hare, fowl, and wild boar) and–the uncontested monarch–pork. The pig was, and remains, the foundation upon which the lion’s share of Umbrian dishes rest for a number of reason. Pigs once had a symbiotic relationship with the land (less so now as most are no longer kept outdoors), as each fall they were herded under oak trees bordering farm fields to consume the fallen acorns and—ahem—fertilize the fields along the way. Pigs are a smaller, less dangerous animal than cattle and their care and feeding were often the responsibility of the family’s children. And, most importantly, pigs can be consumed down to the last centimeter. Nothing was wasted when a pig was butchered, and during a time when a family of twenty had to stretch out a single pig to cover a year (something often done), this could make a big difference.
They say that pigs are highly intelligent animals. After having them as next door neighbors for 18 years, I have my doubts.
Most country families in Umbria still butcher a pig each year (though now the meat is consumed by about four people, and much less of it is cured in favor of freezing), and many urban families reserve a pig in the spring at a local farm, which raises it for their clients until the following winter. This tradition is so strong that a recent EU regulation banning home butchering was amended to allow a limited number of pigs to be home butchered (across Italy). The ingrained frugality continues, and the pig is still consumed from snout to tail (head cheese helps clear up the scraps, as does blood pudding (a blood, sugar, raisin, pinenut baked concoction that my husband’s 105 year old grandmother still makes), heavy use of lard in cooking, and generosity with the dogs.).
Le dejeuner sur l’herbe
So, have I mentioned that I’m a vegetarian? Yes, and I may as well fast forward over the first years of avoidance ( I would simply head out of town for the weekend) followed by reluctant acceptance (I would hunker down inside the house for the weekend) to my current whole-hearted embrace (I invite friends for a “salsicciata”, or sausage roast, for the weekend). It has been a long road to reconcile my American urban vegetarian value system with the Umbrian rural farming value system, but I have done it. Here’s how:
Respect the Pig
Ok, there’s no way around it. The pigs end up dead. Yep. They are killed in the end. So, if that’s a deal breaker for you, it’s going to be a problem. I realized that it’s not so much a deal breaker for me if 1) the animals are treated well during their life and 2) the animals are treated well in death. Which they are, on both counts.
There’s no getting around this.
Umbrians (and, I suspect many cultures who maintain a much more immediate relationship with their food than most Americans do) tend to treat their animals well…they eat well, they have ample room and fresh air, they are not given hormones, antibiotics, or fillers, they are allowed to grow at a normal rate and are given adequate vet care. This not because Umbrians are more soft-hearted about animals in general (their unsentimental view of dogs can be jarring), but because they care about what they eat and any animal who has been badly fed, stressed, and medicated is not going to make for good eating.
The actual killing of the pig is, I daresay, anticlimactic. There is no throat-slitting, no trauma, no slasher-film graphic. They take a compressed air pistol shot to the temple, and are already gone when they hit the ground. That’s how it’s done. It took me years—years—to work up the courage to stand by and watch, and then I felt silly for making such a big deal of it. Some squealing occurs, not because of pain or terror but because pigs are stubborn, ornery SOBs who don’t like to be moved around, be it from one sty to another, from one pasture to another, or from one dimension to another.
Three generations of “norcini” or hog butchers.
Respect the Earth
There is no environmental impact in family farm stock raising. We feed them the forage we raise in our fields, and use their waste to fertilize our fields. This is not a feed lot. There is no manure lagoon. They roam freely in their pen. They are never medicated (unless, of course, they get sick). All those misgivings I had about meat consumption in the 1980s in the US do not apply here. In fact, much of the Umbrian landscape—the patchwork of tiny, oak-ringed fields, pastures, vineyards, and olive groves–would be very different were it not for the history of the small, family farm which dabbles a bit in stock, a bit in forage, and a bit in produce.
It’s a tag-team job of hands and knives (and tongues).
Respect the People
To love Umbria is to love its culture, history, and people. And it’s hard to separate that from the dinner table. There are some practices that have roots in history that I consider indefensible (genital mutilation comes to mind, for example), but the annual hog kill is not one of them.
Once a year, the extended family gets together (with various neighbors, friends, and passers-by who catch a whiff of fresh sausages frying) for what amounts to more of a party than a chore. In Umbria, the heavy work of sectioning the meat, grinding mixes for sausage and salame, and preparing haunches and shoulders for salting and curing is primarily the men’s job, though that’s not true in all of Italy, and the women spend the day bustling back and forth from the kitchen with pots of boiling water, spices, and lots of unsolicited advice.
Making the salame is serious business accompanied by lots of banter.
There is laughter, light-hearted ribbing, and hours and hours of story-telling. Long dead family and friends are brought up as if they had just departed yesterday, and children (mine included) are handed knives and taught how to correctly cut ribs (usually by four different people with four conflicting methods), make head cheese (in a perplexing development for this vegetarian mom, my eldest son’s favorite task is also arguably the goriest one), and, in a subtle way, internalize the cycle of life-death-life. The day culminates in a sausage roast come dinner time, when the numbers swell and often an organetto appears from nowhere to wheeze out traditional tunes.
My son’s favorite task is, clearly, also the most dangerous and disgusting.
Have I begun eating meat? No (more out of habit that principle–honestly, many of the same moral and ethical arguments made against the meat industry can be made against the sugar and cocoa bean industry but that doesn’t slow my chocolate consumption one bit, baby) but I learned that though we began our journeys from two points of departure that seemed diametrically opposed, somehow the Umbrians and I have ended up in the exact same place.
Our charcuterie curing under a thick layer of salt, pepper, and garlic.
Intrigued by home curing meat? Follow Judy from Divina Cucina as she spends the next twelve months showing us her thighs, breasts, and belly during Charcutepalooza!
