A Day Trip for Truffle Hunting - Orvieto

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As a day trip from Rome, we wanted to show Mom the countryside and most importantly the impressive Cathedral in Orvieto. We knew it would be colder than our last visit in early September a few years ago, but we would deal. We rented a car for a day with a Never Lost navigational system, and, slowly, made our way out of the city. I was unsure if we chose shortest distance or shortest time, or most difficult route possible, on the Never Lost, but immediately, Eric was peeved. On the map, it seemed a short distance from the Hertz office to the highway, but the Never Lost took us through the city, making numerous turns and consistently saying “keep to the right” until we were a little lost, made our way back around, and finally made it out to the highway.

Once on the autostrada it was pretty easy to find Orvieto but we were looking for a car park to leave the car so that we could take a funicular up the hill to the old walled city. We thought we found the parking lot, but saw another Hertz office and wanted to confirm where things were to avoid walking unnecessarily in the cold. Eric pulled into the tiny parking spot, confirmed directions, and immediately, the fun started. Eric could not figure out how to get the manual transmission car into reverse. After trying a few different ways, he hoped he could just roll back down the tiny hill, into traffic, and turn the car to the left. As soon as he rolled down the little hill, though, he realized he did not go back far enough, and there was a stupid pole to his left so that he could not pull the car around. In the meantime, we had the butt of our car sticking out into traffic, which was luckily passing us by without honking horns like you would have in the US in the same situation, and would have made Eric even more flustered. We tried every combination of pushing down on the stick and moving it up, down, right, we tried pulling the knob up, etc. I got out of the car to ask the Hertz woman for help but she was on the phone and refused to tell the person on the phone to hold on was I am jumping up and down and banging on the glass window to ask for help. Seeing that she was in no rush to help us, I got behind the wheel and Eric planned on pushing the car farther into traffic so that I could pull the car to the left. Finally, as Eric was pushing me back the woman from Hertz finally ended her call to come help. She calmly informed me that there was a little plastic ring under the knob of the stick shift that needs to be lifted with your fingers in order to slide the stick into reverse. Now, I have been driving manual transmissions since, roughly, 1994, and Eric since 1997. We have rented every manufacturer from Hertz over the years. We have rented Lancia in Italy and Fiat in Ireland in the past. How were we ever supposed to guess that was how to use the stick shift on this Italian Lancia brand car. The guy at Hertz probably should have mentioned it. But, in the end, problem solved, I pulled the car to the left and parked it on the side of the road. We all got back into the car to drive one block more before pulling into a parking lot, where Eric was both happy to be rid of the car and apologizing to his mother for the foul language he was yelling during this entire exchange. In the end, we arrived in Orvieto, and it was time to eat.

We took the funicular, or vertical train car, to climb up the hill into the old part of town. From there, we jumped on a little city bus to take us to the main square at the top of the hill. We arrived with the sun, thankfully, shining on the façade of the cathedral, or Duomo, of Orvieto. The gold work on the front of the church was beautiful and glimmering brightly. We held off on seeing the inside in favor of finding lunch. We tried an Etruscan restaurant we ate at during our last trip, but it was closed for renovations; being the off season for the town. We wandered until we found another recommended restaurant and ended up at La Pergola, where I remembered eating during our last trip, but Eric had no recollection. Once we sat down I thought one thing - let the eating begin.

Umbrian Feast

Orvieto is on the tip of Umbria, which has a lot of similar cuisine to Tuscany. I wanted two things - truffles and wild boar. La Pergola had no English menu, so I did my best with the translation. I decided on a selection of traditional Umbrian crostini - toasted bread with olive oil, tomatoes, mushrooms, and pate, which were all delicious. Eric warmed up with a minestrone soup. I continued with gnocchi potato pasta with spinach, bacon, and truffles. I was eagerly anticipating my truffles, but could not remember the word for wild boar. I always get the words confused for wild boar, “cinghiale,” and rabbit, “coniglio”. I asked the server about wild boar, but he said they did not have it. But, I figured one out of the two was sufficient for the brief trip to Umbria. After we started eating though, I asked the other server, and she confirmed they did have a wild boar in tomato sauce as a secondi piatti, or second course to be eaten after the pasta, or primi piatti. I quickly replied to her - we will have a plate. So, after my heavenly gnocchi with black truffles (I just love the smell, and each gnocchi just melted in my mouth), and Eric’s pasta with duck in a red sauce, we shared the wild boar, which included several tender pieces of boar in a tangy red sauce. This is what I miss about Umbria and Tuscany. My two favorite dishes, both washed down with a crisp white Orvieto Classico wine. I was quite happy. I knew even if we never saw the cathedral, I was happy to be out of the Roman eateries and enjoying the countryside cooking.

We then took some time to walk a bit of the town, waiting for a bank to open after lunch so that Mom could exchange her travelers’ checks into Euro. We stopped for a tasty caffe, espresso, finally found a bank, and wandered over to the cathedral. We tried to show Mom some of the differences between the Duomo in Orvieto and the Basilica of St. Peter’s, including a Pieta, different from Michelangelo’s in the Vatican. As I was pointing out some of the differences an Italian man approached us and gave us some additional information, which I tried to understand with my limited Italian knowledge, and then translate to Eric and Mom. Then, the conversation turned to a philosophical discussion of the church and how we are all connected - the people and the earth, and then the conversation derailed. I understood he was talking about binary numbers, the atmosphere, the similarities between words in different languages, somehow connecting the words “Chicago,” “go,” and “andare,” which means to go in Italian. I tried to translate some of the words as we simultaneously tried to back away from the strange and somewhat crazy Italian man. After about ten minutes, which seemed like an eternity, he finally said his goodbyes and we continued our tour of the cathedral, before we made our way back to the funicular, and to the car, which Eric expertly maneuvered into reverse, and we made our way back towards Rome.

Always Lost

I took a bit of a nap for a few minutes in the car and Eric woke me as we made our way from the autostrada that links Rome to Florence and onto Rome’s ring road. We were not pleased at the direction the Never Lost was taking us and I confirmed quickly with Eric - do you want to follow my directions with the map or the Never Lost? He trusted me and we turned the horrid machine off. Once off the highway, we followed a road that should have led directly onto the road where the Hertz office was located, just with some bends in the road. I, then, stupidly, turned the Never Lost back on thinking it would help me to follow the road better. That machine, the “Always Lost”, got us so amazingly lost and the number of times I heard “calculating route” and “keep to the right, followed by a keep to the right.” I should have followed my gut on the directions and instead used this machine to second guess myself. We turned round and round until at one point I asked Eric to pull to the side. If I was in the passenger seat with a regular window I probably would have thrown the Always Lost out the window. Instead, I took a deep breath from the back of the car, Eric apologized once again to his mother about the cursing and lost tempers, and we finally made our way in the right direction to Hertz. Dropping off the car itself took only a minute, but then I had to wait in a line in the office to separately return the machine. I wanted to throw it at the woman behind the counter, but tried to curb my American temper. I waited patiently until I returned the machine, walked out the door, and desperately wanted a drink. I reminded myself it was a successful day; I ate wild boar and truffles with a nice white wine, I saw a beautiful Duomo, and was ready to call it quits for the day.

Wandering Rome

Eric brought his mother to the airport early on Sunday. We spent the rest of our stay in Rome relaxing and wandering through the narrow streets and alleys, stopping to read our books in the cafes. Sunday, this was made even more difficult because of the never ending rain. Instead, we stayed in, read, ate, and drank wine. On Monday, we finally had a break in the weather and under great blue skies we wandered past the cat sanctuary, up to Trevi fountain, in the neighborhood surrounding the Pantheon, out to the Roman forum, and back. We stopped for pizza and caffe and had a simple, final evening in the Campo dei Fiori before leaving Rome on Tuesday morning to head north to Tuscany - for more food and even better wine.

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Photos

Gnocchi
With spinach, pancetta, and truffles.