Well, we Islanders don't go to Europe for the waters. We go to Italy for a religious pilgrimage, for the art and architecture, for the food, and mostly for a chance to let Umbria infect us with its truly uncensored Italian sensibilities.

We were able to live like Italians for a week in Umbria, squeezed between 10 days in Rome and a long weekend in Venice, thanks to a family we met via Intervac, a home-exchange program (see sidebar).

The mother, Annamaria, is a secondary-school math teacher. The father, Dino, is a teacher at a conservatory in Sienna who studies Gregorian chants. And one mustn't forget the two daughters, Livia and Lucilla, teenage girls so pretty my sons were asking for an extra coin to throw into the Trevi Fountain. (According to the story, one coin in the fountain assures you of a return trip to Italy. Two means you'll fall in love while in Italy. Three means you'll meet your soulmate in Italy.)

The week was spent mostly in the picturesque medieval town of Arrone, named for a Roman nobleman who in the 9th century built a fortified castle on the hillside above the Valnerina Valley.

The steep, cobblestoned streets of Assisi are much easier going down than going up, but along the way, there are artists' shops, tobacco shops and, of course, gelato shops. Photo courtesy of Mary Kaye Ritz

To live like Italians is no small thing. It means re-orienting your entire internal clock.

During our week in a villa outside Arrone, we'd wake at 7 or 8 a.m., eat a light breakfast, usually with a strong cup of espresso made on the gas stove, then go out to see the sights.

Italians start their day about 8:30 a.m., then work or run errands until about noon.

Lunch is the major meal of the day, and it's never a sandwich at one's desk. Italians are leisurely about their lunchtime repasts, and with all the courses, it can take hours.

In Arrone, you can't get arrested naked on a street corner between 1 p.m. and 4:30 p.m. These hours are the languid time spent taking a nap, or at any rate indoors, away from the unrelenting afternoon sun. We liked to spend these hours playing cards at the kitchen table, where the wind rippling through the olive orchards would make a much-appreciated detour through the villa.

Life resumes at about 4 p.m. The shutters of the stores are then thrown open, and commerce again commences in the picturesque towns of Italy's heartland.

At about 7:30 p.m., the shutters close again, and everyone heads home for the second-most-important meal of the day, dinner. This lighter meal doesn't usually begin until the sun has fallen.

After a late dinner, neighbors come out of their homes and gather on porches to catch up with each other and laugh about every new little thing — probably including those strange Americans upstairs, who were already in bed.

The sounds of their voices and their music would float up the walls of our villa until well past midnight, but it was a happy sound that let us slip off to sleep in the midst of it.

In Assisi, the Basilica of St. Francis consists of a Gothic upper section and a Romanesque lower one. Photo courtesy of Mary Kaye Ritz

No one talks about Italy without talking about the food. And while sauces are nuanced and dishes complex, the foremost thing to remember about Umbrian cuisine is that the ingredients are, by far, more important than the concoction.

In Arrone, people in the neighborhood feed each other. Mr. Luciano, whose olive orchards our bedroom window overlooked, supplied us with the olio (olive oil) from the press in his basement. The neighbors on the other side plucked their fig tree for our fruit basket. The family downstairs, our hosts, came by the first night with a lamb pasta meal, then stocked us up with tomatoes, potatoes, zucchini and eggplant from a nearby garden.

Every item was just-picked and marvelously imperfect, without the supermarket waxed-vegetable sheen that masks flavorless innards.

We also found meals in the city that offered the same luxurious Umbrian flavors. Restaurant lunches might start with mista verde as antipasti — glistening slices of marinated eggplant, roasted red peppers and perhaps some olives. That would be followed by a pasta course, then fish and meat courses, a cheese course, a salad course, and — of course — the dolce ending, some little sweet things to be washed down with another espresso, so strong it could be used to caulk a leaky bathtub.

This is utterly not how it's done in Italy, we learned.

Once you've eaten your fill, why would anyone rush out into the world? This is the time to spend in the company of friends and family, relaxing and talking about ... well ... everything and nothing.

Home-cooked lunches, too, are still a major affair, even if you're on holiday.

You spent your morning shopping at the bakery for a loaf of hard-crusted, peasant-style bread with fluffy insides. At the butcher shop, you picked out freshly made sausage. At the cheese shop, the proprietor fished the softball of mozzarella out of the milky water. At the vegetable stand, you squeezed the champagne-colored plums to make sure they were ripe and inspected a stem to see how long ago that eggplant was harvested.

And the tomatoes. Ahh, Umbrian tomatoes. 'Nuff said.

An entire morning can be devoted to picking out what you will eat for lunch.

One day, after we had cooked for our hosts, they reciprocated with an amazing meal from Annamaria's hands: a dish of prosciutto draped over fresh cantaloupe, lasagna, towers of mozzarella and tomato slices drizzled with olive oil, a salad (romaine, walnuts, orange slices and crumbled hard cheese, lightly dressed) and a gelato-laden concoction for dessert.

We were so inspired, we've already begun planning the menu for when they come to Hawai'i to visit us, sometime during the school break.

The Ponte della Torri connects Spoleto, another hillside town, to a towering fortress across a ravine. Photo courtesy of Mary Kaye Ritz

When we were not eating, we could be found exploring the great churches: St. Francis of Assisi's two basilicas in Assisi, and the duomo (cathedral) in Spoleto, Santa Maria Assunta.

To escape the sun, we ducked into the cool of the churches for more than just a quiet moment of meditation. Early on, at the amazing Abbazia San Pietro in Valle, an 8th-century abbey outside Arrone, we learned that some of the finest art in Italy is in its churches.

On the walls of the little Santa Maria church in Arrone were frescoes that dated back centuries. The abbey outside Arrone had frescoes even older, and included a sarcophagus from the Roman period and 12th-century frescoes that are from the Umbrian school.

Popes and patrons would entice the great artists of the day to use their gifts for a greater calling: bringing the rapture of fine art to the masses. That's why spare time spent inside a church in Italy can count double: as a chance to sit down for a few minutes of quiet reflection as well as a chance to walk around and gawk at the art.

Italian churches often are an amalgamation. We saw St. Mary of the Angels, the little chapel that St. Francis of Assisi built from the ruins of an earlier temple in its complete form — about the size of a first-grade classroom — completely enclosed by the immense Basilica of Santa Maria degli Angeli, in the area of Porziuncola.

Up higher, in Assisi proper, the basilica of St. Francis has two churches, created at separate times, an upper church and a lower church. Elsewhere in Assisi is a church that used to be a Roman temple.

It takes the concept of recycling to a whole new level.

This window is in the upper basilica, which has a remarkable design; notice the French touches in this detail picture. Photo courtesy of Mary Kaye Ritz

We promised our housesitter balsamic vinegar; we promised our family Vatican memorabilia; we promised a dear family friend Murano glass earrings; and we promised ourselves we'd bring back bottles of olio.

Surely we're not the only people from Hawai'i who only half-fill our luggage so we'll be able to squeeze in all the omiyage we've promised to bring back?

While there are fashionistas who drop entire paychecks on a pair of leather shoes specially made in Milan, we were on a budget. But that didn't mean we could arrive home empty-handed.

From Umbria, the best omiyage probably is black truffles, either bottled or diced up and made into a spread with olives and/or peppers. And the olive oil, which is as varied as wonderful as the wines of Napa Valley. (Be sure to taste-test, since different oils have distinct flavors.)

The magnificent Santa Maria Assunta, Spoleto's principal church, was built in the 12th century with mosaics and a pretty rose window. Italian Government Tourist Board, Los Angeles

Here are lesser-known but spectacular sights to behold:

• In Spoleto, the Ponte della Torri leads from the hillside town of Spoleto to a towering fortress on the other side. A stroll across the ancient bridge is breathtaking and calming, except when your teenage sons decide to hang over the side of it.

• On the road from Terni to Arrone, spend an afternoon at the Cascata Marmore, a man-made waterfall that they turn on and off.

• Wandering the sloping streets of Assisi doubles as both exercise and sightseeing; the hills give you a better workout than a Stairmaster.

• The hilltop towns of Arrone and Montefranco are as pretty up close as from a distance. We found that people greeted us kindly as we hiked around and were always appreciative of our attempts to speak Italian, no matter how much we mangled the language.

When I go again — and I will, since I, too, threw a coin into the Trevi Fountain — I have vowed to learn more of the language and soak up more of the flavor.

Because in Umbria, flavor is what it's all about.