Umbria - Workaway Number 6

For our next adventure we headed up to the little town of Chiusi, about 2 hours by train from Rome. Our  Workaway host, Jan, met us at the station and drove us to her home and BnB, called Casa Julian. It's in a perfect location, close to Lake Trasimeno and near the border with Tuscany.

The countryside feels like you are surrounded by a bunch of postcards - beautiful rural scenes, gentle hills, lots of shades of green. We got to stay in one of Jan's comfortable apartments, complete with woodburner.

We loved the two friendly and gentle labradors, and the cats, and the chickens. Since we have been doing all these Workaways, mostly in rural locations, we've become rather fond of chickens and have decided to get a couple on our return home to NZ next year.

Here's one of our little friends checking out the olives.

We helped with an olive harvest; about 40 trees. We were very lucky to be able to go to the 'frantoio olivestri' with Jan and watch the pickings turn into 17 litres of very good gold-green oil. That night we feasted on bruschetta, rubbed with garlic and drizzled with the freshest cold-pressed oil I've ever tasted!

As hosts go, Jan is one of the best. She is well immersed into the local community, having lived there about 16 years. I went along to one of her pilates classes (instructions all in Italian), and we met lots of her English, American and Italian friends over coffees and a trip to a great bakery. We had the chance to go to a chestnut festa too in a nearby town. 

Meeting the baker

It's just as well that we got in lots of good physical work, as there was far too much delicious food!

Lizzie