The Villa

For the rest of our stay in Italy, we'll be staying in "The Villa", near Perugia. Tom and Lori, our hosts, are friends of Marianne and Larry. They've always wanted to rent an Italian villa, finally took the plunge this year, and then invited all of their friends and family to stay with them. We were lucky enough to get included in that, and couldn't turn down the offer.


The villa is ridiculous. It was built in the 1970s by Aldo Piccini, who apparently made his fortune in the crane business. He passed away, and his children now rent the villa. It's an interesting mix of modern-ish construction and classic decoration.

Rather than trying, and failing, to adequately describe it, here are some pictures:

The villa, from the driveway. Wow!

The front door to the villa

The grand staircase, looking down at the front door

The... parlor? We never actually used this room.

The kitchen, with awesome commercial stove & ovens

Half of the basement. The bottles on the wall are part of a massive collection of unopened liquor bottles. There were probably over a thousand bottles lining the walls of the basement.

More of the basement, complete with billiards table and antique casino items (roulette table, slot machines, etc) 

Our bedroom, one of 8. Probably larger than our condo.

From the bookshelf in our bedroom:
Indiana Jones e il Tempio Maledetto

Pizza oven out back. We tried to make pizza one night, but didn't have a
pizza peel. Using a pizza oven to cook pizza in a pan results in soggy
bottom pizza :(

Pool area

Reading at a table by the pool. Hard to beat this.

Part of the wraparound porch on the first floor

The tennis court. Behind it, you can just barely see the bocce court.

There were many hints that the villa was built in the 70s.
One of the more obvious: a jiggly belt exercise machine

I could post 100 pictures of this place and still not capture it. It is incredible. I spent half a day just wandering through the different rooms and inspecting all the furniture and art. And I don't even think I got to all of the rooms.

Needless to say, we feel amazingly lucky to have the chance to stay somewhere like this, and are very grateful to Tom and Lori for inviting us. Over the next few days, we'll be visiting some nearby towns, doing a wine tour, and relaxing by the pool.