Day 6. Viterbo, Bagnaia and Villa Lante

Today was a pretty good day. The night before I ran into Mark and Oksana and after a few glasses of wine we decided that the three of us would go driving around to look for some historic sites. We left the resort at 9am and went to Viterbo first. Viterbo has an interesting history including a story about how the town itself took part in the selection of a Pope in the 12th or 13th century. Around that time period several years had passed and the cardinals had not voted on who was to become the next Pope. Viterbo has some thermal springs and some resorts that the cardinals liked to stay in for rest and relaxation so there they all were relaxing and having a good ol’ time when the village people decided they were fed up with the indecisive attitudes of these guys. So they rounded all of the cardinals, locked them up and starved them until they finally picked the would-be Pope. Cool hunh?

So we visited the Historical Center of Viterbo, which is really nice and is surrounded by a fortress-like wall, then ate some Doner Kebab! I saw the Kebab place and insisted that we eat some. It was $3.50Euros and tasted delicious! I figured I would take a picture to show Steve but after my camera’s flash went off, the woman working there got all pissed off at me and insisted that I turn off my camera and delete the picture. Luckily I already had my kebab in hand and just pretended to be a stupid tourist and faked to be taking more pictures of the outside and stuff. Oksana, who’s Russian, told me that she was probably angry because Islamic women are not supposed to be in pictures with men other than their rightful husbands’.

After the Kebab we walked around for quite a while getting lost and then finding ourselves again near the car. It was really cold and I didn’t have my jacket, only my sweater which made it that much harder to enjoy the outdoors.

Mark wanted to visit this place called “Villa Lante” in Bagnaia so off we went! The villa was really awesome. Apparently it is the very first garden of its kind in the world. Some rich guy from the Lante bloodline bought a huge property on a hill then fashioned this intricate system of waterways to flow throughout all the gardens surrounding his mansion. It was pretty incredible. An entire river flows onto his property but then branches off into fountains, waterways, ponds, and waterfalls. The system is made entirely of stone and probably took a very, very, long time to build.

We left Bagnaia, then drove towards the coast to the marina of Monte Calvo. It was a little warmer on the beach and the thing I remember most was the sand. It was incredibly soft but dark and coarse. We then drove up to another town along the western coast, I forget its name right now but I remember that it was a peninsula-like town that was very windy. The trip back to Soriano Nel Cimino was beautiful. The sun came shinning through and you could see out to the horizon on the flat countryside. Once back at the resort I ate dinner then had some wine with the British folk upstairs. They were great as always and I have an open invitation to visit them whenever I want.

Overall it was a very good day. Again, I have no idea what I am going to do tomorrow. I hear it’s supposed to rain so I don’t know if much will be accomplished.

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