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!