Castles, Lakes and Wine

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Geo: 42.0912, 11.7968

It seems a lot of people have trouble pronouncing our next port of call. Civitavecchia. It is pronounced (chiv-vita-veck-ia), it just rolls off the tongue once you know how. Again as with a lot of these ports it is not that picturesque and is filled with lots of container ships and tankers. That's said it's a beautiful morning although that dogged northerly wind seems intent on hanging around and pegging the temperatures back a few degrees.

I emerge out onto the balcony and look down at the dockside to a scene of organised chaos. I guess most people are up and about early and heading into Rome today. A fleet of coaches waits patiently for its bleary eyed passengers to emerge from Liberty's white underbelly and whisk them the 40 or so miles to the Eternal City.

We have an excursion booked today through Royal Caribbean but not to Rome. We have visited Rome on a number of occasions and even spent Christmas there one year. Peter found an interesting half day tour on the Royal Caribbean website before we left and we decided that would be preferable to staying on the ship or visiting the small unexciting town of Civitavecchia itself. However the tour is not till the afternoon and so we have all morning to ourselves.

We have an early lunch in the Windjammer. Don't think I have witnessed it so quiet before and we don't have a problem finding a table. Fully sated we head back to the cabin and grab cameras and hats etc. We also apply some bug spray to any exposed skin. Out trip today is to Lake Bracciano and Anguillara Sabazia. The lake is about 50 miles to the east of our position and 25 miles north of Rome.

We head down to our waiting coach and are greeted by our tour guide Jackie. We are surprised that she is British, although she has lived in Italy for 24 year. Our fellow excursionees are all very prompt and we get to leave before our allotted time. We head north for a short while to enable us to join the main motorway (Autostrazza) southwards. All this while Jackie is narrating the history of the area, going into great details about the importance of her hometown of Tarquinia. It was chief amongst the 12 cities of Etruria with the Etruscan's considered Italy's first civilisation.

We soon turn of the Autostrazza and head eastwards until we reach the town of Bracciano. We are not stopping here but as we reach the southern end of the town we make a stop so that we can take pictures of the impressive Castello Orsini-Odescalchi. Back in the 15th century is was the feudal home of the Papal families of Borgia and Orsini. In more recent times it has formed the backdrop of many a celebrity wedding such as Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes. We skirt around the edge of Lake Bracciano towards our next stop Anguillara Sabazia. It only takes about 20 minutes and we have about an hour to look around and enjoy this small lakeside town. Some of our fellow American tourists are excited to learn that a couple of episodes of Everybody Loves Raymond were filmed here. Having heard of the show but never seen it, we are less excited. We climb up through some narrow pretty streets to take pictures of the lake before heading down to a small café for Gelato and Expresso.

Back on the bus we head back toward the coast and the Cento Corve Winery. Cento Corve means 100 Crows and it's run by the Callacciani family and has an excellent reputation. We are greeted by the owner and his family before being invited to try 6 different wines, 3 whites and 3 reds. They are all excellent. We are then invited to try an ancient vintage called Giacchi which again is excellent. A table set up with meats, cheeses and breads and we spend a leisurely hour or so enjoying all that Cento Corve has to offer. Sadly we can't stock up on any wines like some of our fellow guests as we would not be able to take on-board the plane for our journey home.

Although only a few hours long our excursion today was informative and interesting and the wines at the end were the icing on the cake.

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