This is definitely another one of my favorite days from our time in Umbria, Italy, this summer!
In the morning, we met in Gubbio, a medieval walled town, on market day. In order to fully appreciate Gubbio for its terracotta roofs and the surrounding countryside, we rode the Funavia to the top. Basically, imagine riding to the top of a ski mountain in a sort of bird cage… I know… For someone who doesn’t like heights, this was an interesting experience. It actually felt safer than I thought it looked. Getting on and off the lift only added to the experience. The lift doesn’t slow down when loading and unloading, so I, more or less, had to lightly jog and jump into the cage, while holding my 3-year-old in my arms… And then jump out once we reached the top of the mountain. If you can picture a graceful ballerina leaping into the air, that’s the opposite of what I looked like.
Thankfully, the view and fun of it were well worth it. We toured the church at the top, enjoyed a snack and then leisurely walked back down in order to visit the market for lunch supplies. The walk was beautiful with lots of interesting things to see, including hundreds of snails.
Part of the way, all of us crammed into an elevator to shorten the trip to the market. Unfortunately, my kids were exhausted and hungry by the time we reached the market, and my husband cranky as a direct result of my kids being cranky. Lesson learned: If you’d like to leisurely stroll the market and enjoy everything that it has to offer (from food to clothing to pets for sale), I actually recommend that you take the cable car back down instead of walking.
We did enjoy a really lovely picnic lunch by the Roman Amphitheater though, which sits directly next to a playground. Perfect when you’re traveling with young kids!
After resting up a bit, we went on a serious adventure in the afternoon that was an absolute blast. We went truffle hunting with a local truffle hunter and her dog… So cool! And, yes, our truffle guide was a very successful woman, which is a bit unusual for the male-dominated world of truffle hunting.
In case you don’t know, truffle hunting is serious, serious business, more so than any of us knew. It is not uncommon that truffle dogs are poisoned by other truffle hunters! We were cautioned ahead of time:
- We must be absolutely quiet in order to protect our guide’s truffle hunting spots. Not only that, we had to pretend that we were merely going on an afternoon hike with our kids, because no one must be alerted to our real mission. We met up with our guide and her dog in the woods!
- The terrain would be very difficult. We were told to wear long pants and hiking boots (if possible). The hike really was no joke. For two hours, we climbed through the woods, in and out of valleys, through thorny brush, etc. I have the ripped pants to prove it. Once we fully realized what we were in for, I was doubly glad that our three-year-old had been able to stay behind with a sitter. We would have had to carry him a lot, I’m sure.
It was such an amazing experience! Watching the truffle dog in action was really impressive – she would literally just bolt in a certain direction, dig in the ground and come up with a mouthful of truffles. The guide had to work quickly to get them out of her mouth, because truffle dogs know the secret: Truffles are delicious. The kids each got to dig out a truffle – the dog found so many that we all walked away with 2-3 truffles and still had enough for our guide to take home. My husband and I enjoyed truffles on our scrambled eggs every morning.
I highly recommend this activity for families (ages 5+).
