The last week of our overseas adventure

It feels a bit odd to be writing this post back in Adelaide, but the final week was just too busy. Following our last shopping fling in Florence many in the group were in 'luggage denial' and despite reminders to pack early, not many followed this advice.
On Monday we found out that Nazareth College's Italian Trippers were coming to Perugia, including Claudia's second cousin and a former teacher from TMC. Their group was staying in the outskirts of Perugia and planned to come in for dinner, so we made tentative arrangements to meet up with them afterwards for a gelato or two. Sadly, their driver was directionally challenged and despite his GPS, they still got lost and never made it to the city centre.
Another attempt in the morning to meet up for lunch was similarly scuppered when a 15 minute drive from their hotel to the Baci factory turned into a hour-long adventure, and Teresa, their group organiser, couldn't risk driving around Umbria and Tuscany for the rest of the day trying to find their agriturismo hotel for the night. Julianne and I finished off our walk around the city for her collection of photos of various architectural styles and discovered snow on the top of Mount Subasio - the same peak we had walked along on our journey from Spello to Assisi. Luckily the weather didn't stay cold for long.
On Tuesday night budding chef Courtney and her apprentice Lauren created a gourmet feast of homemade burgers, inviting along two friends from their class - Joseph and Hazem. This necessitated one final trip down to the big supermarket via the MiniMetro, and the opportunity to stock up on McDonald's mayonaise and ketchup, as well as a box or ten of Baci and hot chocolate powder. On Wednesday morning a small group decided to come along and visit the beautiful National Gallery of Umbria, preceded by breakfast at Sandri, Perugia's oldest cafe. The rest of the day was spent farewelling new found friends from classes while our last night in Perugia meant dinner at the restaurant where we had spent our first evening before the final frenzy of packing took place for our early morning departure back to Rome. One last gelato and a look at the view of the lights twinkling over the Umbrian hills finished off our Perugian adventure.