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Published: February 8th 2010
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Monday 8.2.210 day 117
The village of Sorianoa where we are staying is a communist town and there is a siren that sounds 3 times a day that can be heard though the whole village it is at 8 am to start work 12 midday for lunch and 5 pm to stop work.
Today we went to Montefiascone a pretty town perched on the edge of a defunct volcanic crater it has splendid views of lake Bolsena. It has the world’s second largest dome (st Peters in the Vatican is the largest). It also has fantastic wine that we have had a few bottles of over the last few days. We then followed the crater along Lago di Bolsena Europe’s largest volcanic lake we stopped on the side of the lake at the town of Bolsena for lunch. This town was the scene of a miracle. (Corpus Domini, also known as the “Miracle of Bolsena” occurred in 1263 when a German priest named Peter of Prague stopped in the lakeside town of Bolsena to hold mass above the tomb of Santa Cristina while on a pilgrimage to Rome.
Peter however doubted the transubstantiation, but as he readied himself to give communion
the bread turned blood red; the liquid then spilled onto the white altar cloth, forming a stain that resembled the profile of Jesus, as well as the onto the marble floor and into the grotto of St. Christina, where the stain can still be seen today. A miracle? A mystery? The Catholic Church has always denied it. A year after it occurred however, Pope Urban IV declared it a miracle. Recently, the Academies of Science have attributed it to a microscopic fungus that can germinate in bread dough and turn it blood red.)
We then drove to the near by town of Civita di Bagnoregio which is built on a calcareous formation high above the Calanchi valley although it is a bit of a walk across the bridge to get to the town it is well worth the effort and the views are breathtaking. We went into a few of the cave houses. Our resort said that it is almost uninhabited now and Wikipedia say that only 15 people live there now but there seemed to be a lot more people there when we where there. There is about 5 restaurants or bars as well as a shop and olive
shop. There was a bus load of English speaking teenagers there. St Bonaventure was born there. Some of the town’s buildings have fallen off the side of the Clift. If you are ever close to this town it is a must see. Even though it was not in our lonely planet book to fink out how to get there you can looked it up on the town’s website. We then drove to Sutre past Lake Vico which is close to our village so we often pass it on our way. According to legend it was created by Hercules ramming his club into the ground. In fact it is in a volcanic crater.
Sutri is the sole example of the living time of the Etruscan civilization we went to the amphitheatre that was carved into the rock in the 5 century BC we also saw the graves that were carved into the rocks.
We had a fantastic day and where so tired when we got home I cooked some chocolate pasta which we had with local vino.
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