Umbria in May - Città di Castello e Fratta Todina

We leave our base a little later than planned at 6.15 on Saturday morning and are soon heading south. There are few lorries and not much traffic. It’s the first weekend in May but the various long weekends for 25th April and 1st May are already over. We make good time through Bologna and the journey is going smoothly when we turn off the A14 at Cesena to take the SS3bis or E45 towards Umbria. I’m just exulting at the empty road when we run into an almost static traffic jam because the road is totally closed in both directions, for work. It takes us nearly half an hour to get over the hold up but we then resume our journey with little traffic. I don’t know the history of this road. It’s a dual carriage way in need of TLC, but really very quiet. We stop for petrol at the ‘Valico’ where we find an unexpectedly good price and make it into Città di Castello for about noon, about an hour later than we expected.

The ortofrutta market which was our objective is already packing up for the day but we park at the Ansa del tevere car park near the park of the same name. Parking is free and we just cross the road to enter the city walls. We are tired and also hungry so I can’t say we do justice to the town. We wander its streets enough to find a van selling an excellent freshly cooked ‘porchetta’, a bakery with focaccia to go with it and peer inside a couple of churches, but nothing more. Città di castello seems a pleasant, quiet and unpretentious town, but food and rest are the priorities.

We picnic in the park, a cool and relaxing place, stop for some essentials at a shopping centre and then continue our journey to Fratta Todina where we have rented an apartment. After settling in, we go for a walk around Fratta, a tiny castle village, with one main street, from which dead end alley ways branch off on both sides. 

Nice. But I’m still hungry and still tired…..back to the apartment for sustenance.