A new city and italiañol

Is there anything, apart from a really good chocolate cream pie and receiving a large unexpected check in the mail, to beat finding yourself at large in a foreign city on a fair spring evening, loafing along unfamiliar streets in the long shadows of a lazy sunset, pausing to gaze in shop windows or at some church or lovely square or tranquil stretch of quayside, hesitating at street corners to decide whether the cheerful and homey restaurant you will remember fondly for years is likely to lie down this street or that one? I just love it. I could spend my life arriving each night in a new city.

Bill Bryson, Neither Here Nor There

I'm packing up for a new city, a town really. Tomorrow I arrive for the first time to Italy, and Assisi. My mother is wandering Italy with a group from her church, and I'll spend a day with her and two days on my own in Assisi.

I'll post lots of what's been piling up before I go, a bit of everything, and be back here once I've perfected the finer points of Italiañol.