Italy blog final day: Civita di Bagnoregio

Our last day of vacation in Italy.  Still another day, but most of that will be spent flying from Rome to NYC, and then on to Austin.

We drove from Orvieto to Fregene, a coastal town just about 12 miles from the Rome airport, but at the urging of some Italians, we made an unplanned side trip along the way to Civita di Bagnoregio.  Just like most of the other places, it involved a lot of walking and some of that was steep, but we felt it was completely worth it.  We"ve seen some amazing and beautiful things during this trip, and this took it to a whole new level.

I'll let these pictures speak for themselves.  We have to get up pretty early, find breakfast, refuel the car before returning it, and then find the return location at the airport, all before we get to stand in lines for customs and security screening.

Thank you all for following along with us.  We enjoy sharing this stuff, and it also helps us by gathering photos and notes together, so we also benefit from this blog.

Day 12: Orvieto

Sorry about the delay in this posting - had a pretty feeble data connection in Orvieto, and I wasn't able to get the photos uploaded from my iPad to the blogging site.  I'm now doing this from our hotel at our final destination before the flights home tomorrow (Saturday) morning.

Checked out of the castle in Perugia and drove a little more than an hour to get to the B&B in Orvieto.  Stopped to buy diesel fuel for the car on the way today.  I paid 1.69 euros per liter, so if you convert the liters to gallons, and the euros to dollars, that works out to $8.64 per gallon of diesel.

Like the B&B in Siena, it is a small place, with real producing olive trees, and the owner of the B&B makes their own olive oil.  Here’s the view from our room:

This place is close enough to town that I do not need to drive or search for parking.  We can walk and take a shortcut through the olive grove and be inside the walls in about 20 minutes, and the first thing we did was get some lunch.

The salumi antipasto, which is various meats, a piece of bruschetta, and a slice of melon:

Jenae had the tortellini with truffles:

And then we wandered about in Orvieto:

Our first stop for sightseeing was the Duomo in Orvieto, which is spectacular on the outside:

But the inside is very austere and simple.  Photos not permitted inside, but the inside really didn't compare to the outside.

Our next sightseeing took us to the underground city, and complex of caves beneath the city:

Exiting from the caves gave us this view of the nearby countryside:

Here's a zoomed in photo of the castle from the left side of the previous photo:

And then I had to visit St. Patrick's well, but Jenae opted to stay on the surface, so I walked down the 248 steps by myself.  This is the view looking down:

And the view looking up.  Then I walked the 248 steps back up out of the well.

A few more random photos from Orvieto:

And this last fellow is Ciro, the owner of the restaurant where we had dinner:

Trattoria dell'Orso 

He's a very charming fellow, he doesn't give you a menu, he just visits with you for little bit, and then tells you what you should have.  It was great!

Day 11: Perugia sightseeing

I don't have many photos today: most of our time during the day was spent at the National Gallery of Umbria and at the Duomo, neither of which allow photography.  There's a few good reasons for that, so I don't mind abiding by that rule.

The day started out nicely, but by mid-afternoon, the clouds started forming, the breeze stiffened, and the temperature cooled significantly.  Perugia is a university town, so we've seen a lot of students, and that also means there's even more pretty Italian women than usual.

While walking about town, we passed through several nice parks and piazzas:

This view is over the edge of the wall, about 5 stories down, and it represents just part of the height involved in entering and exiting almost every town we've visited.  Fortunately, here in Perugia, like Siena, we found one pathway that includes escalators to help.

A few stylish Italians near city hall:

Today we also enjoyed more regional foods, in addition to the wines we've been sampling.  Perugia is known for chocolate, and we found a couple of good chocolate shops, and each had a couple of treats.

On tripadvisor.com, one of the top restaurants is this guy, who makes pork sandwiches out of a tiny standalone kiosk on the sidewalk.  The funny story here is that I had the address and was using google maps on the iPad to locate the place, but it wasn't where the map indicated.  I almost gave up, but Jenae found it while I was staring at the gadget.  Thank you Jenae!

He has a huge stuffed pork roast, slices some off and slaps it into a crusty roll with some coarse salt.

This is what you get for 3 Euros (about $4) - local, authentic, quick, and very tasty!

The next two photos show the clouds gathering before the afternoon rains, and Jenae and I picked these photos to share because we thought they were pretty.

And this is how the streets and piazza emptied out when the rain started.

This is just a photo I took while waiting for Jenae asking someone for information.  A single geranium petal had ended up on a slab of marble that is encrusted with moss.

We had dinner back at a restaurant at the castle, and met a nice couple from New Zealand, also staying here, but they're on a 7 week vacation, because it's a much longer and more expensive flight for them, so they want to maximize their experience.

They commented how travel helps us all better understand the world and each other, and expressed a wish that more people could make an attempt to understand (and appreciate) our similarities, instead of emphasizing and defending our differences.  I agree!

Tomorrow is Thursday, October 10, and we'll leave Perugia and drive about an hour to Orvieto, for a one night stay at a B&B just outside the city walls.  After that, one more night at a beachside town near the Rome airport.

Day 10: from Siena to Perugia

Just like the previous two mornings, the alarm went off at 7:15, because I had told Pierre we would take breakfast at 8:30.  He slept in this morning, but like the previous mornings, his mother Therese had cooked up a storm for us.  Breakfast today included the usual omelet with some garden greens and homegrown tomatoes, crepes (because she's French), yogurt, breakfast bruschetta with sausage and cheese, and tiramisu, which may have been a leftover from the dinner last night (we ate dinner at a restaurant in Siena the previous evening).

Saying goodbye to each other was a bit emotional, with all of us having a tear, she was that sweet, a French woman who had aged gracefully in Italy, to perhaps her mid-60s, now widowed and living on an Italian farm that might be fading away, along with the family history.  We hugged, she kissed us on each cheek, and she said things in French.  She speaks no English, only Italian and French, so I used my iPad to translate our appreciation for having us in her home, with her hospitality and her fantastic cooking.  She felt like a European mother or grandmother to me.

We headed east, stopping at a village on Lake Trasimeno for espresso, bathroom, leg stretching, and a FaceTime chat with my sister in PA.  Continued on to Perugia where the castle we have booked is beyond our expectations.  Of course, we got slightly lost, but the iPad with the local cellular data sim saved my bacon once again.  We also have a Garmin GPS unit that I loaded with 
Italy maps before leaving the US, but the GPS has not been helpful, and the iPad has been almost spot on.  I'm using it almost constantly, draining the battery each day, and so far in 10 days, have used only 780 MB, and my card is good for 5 GB in 30 days, I think, for a cost of 35 euro, about $47.  The GPS unit displays Italy map data, but usually shows us as being off course.  Perhaps the satelites here are not as accurate.

BTW, Jamie and Leesa, we found the perfect location for your next lake home.

Now checked into the hotel - yep, staying in a CASTLE!

You know it's a swanky place when the bath tissue carries the brand:

But then I quickly hillbillied the place up by washing a few things in the bidet:

And stretching the travel clothesline through the bathroom to hang my few laundry items on:

We wandered the castle grounds and took many photos.  Here's a few:

After exploring the grounds of the hotel/Castle, I convinced Jenae that we should get back into the boxy diesel standard transmission car and come into town for wine and recon.  Traffic was tricky, I got lost, but finally found parking, we walked up steep hills, and now we are in the university district, drinking white wine (white wine is the main wine in Umbria, compared to Tuscany, where the local wine is red) and eating complementary snacks at a bar right next to the Galleria Nazionale dell'Umbria, which we'll visit tomorrow.  It's raining outside, we're sitting next to an open window with a lightly cool and damp breeze, but it all feels great, especially knowing the drought that awaits our return to Texas in a few days.

Everywhere are hills.  For example, to get to the part of town in which we now sit, we took many steep flights of stairs up from our parking spot, then to get to this bar from the street, we walked down a steep alley, and now we sit at an open window, looking down into a 3 story courtyard.

Me, writing some notes for the evening's blog entry:

Complimentary snacks served with our wine, to make us stay longer:

As we walked, storm clouds started forming, and here you can see the falling rain in the center of the photo:

To close, I want to relate this story: the young woman who works as a waitress at the bar asked where we are from, and I answered, "Texas, in the United States".  With a big smile, she explained that she is from Kosovo, and she and many other people are grateful to the US for our intervention in the Serbian conflicts during the mid and late 1990s.  That conversation, along with the hugs, smiles, and tears from Therese at the B&B, made for memorable personal connections.