Orvieto With Friends

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Our friends, Sam and Phil, arrived a couple of days ago for a 3-week trip through Italy, bypassing Rome. We had made arrangements prior to the trip to meet up on Sunday in Orvieto, in Umbria.

We hopped on a train again at Rome Termini and in just over an hour, we arrived in Orvieto. Sam and Phil were staying near Assisi, and drove the hour to meet us. The train station is at the bottom of a big hill, where the newer part of town is. The old town is several hundred feet up on top of a volcanic outcrop. There are cliffs surrounding about ¾ of the old part of town. We had to pay to ride a funicular up to the top. It was a first for both of us – a funicular is somewhat like a small train that runs up a steep hill. The compartment stays level, while it climbs the hill.

We had several hours to spend in Orvieto. It was nice to get out of Rome for a day and away from the crowds. We stopped in various small shops, did a bit of shopping and just wandered the town.

We had a great long lunch at a restaurant in the early afternoon. It was nice to really relax in the sun, drinking wine, visiting and drinking wine.

There is a gothic style church/duomo that towers over the entire town. The outside of the church is so different from any of the other churches we’ve seen in Italy. We also climbed about 300 steps to the top of a clock tower to get a great view of the area. After our legs stopped quivering from the climb up, we then climbed down to the bottom of a huge well that was used hundreds of years ago. Two paths circle up and down the inside of the well so that it is one-way traffic. Back when citizens used it for water, they would walk their donkey down to the bottom of the well, fill up their water, and walk up a different path so that they would not get in the way of people coming down. Hard to explain.

When we come back to Italy, we look forward to spending some time north of Rome – either in the Tuscany or Umbria areas. It is much quieter, there is still a lot of history, and so many different towns dotting the hillsides, that you can see different things until your heart’s content.

We are heading home in the morning. We have a driver taking us to the airport at 9:15 am. We fly from Rome to London, and then direct from London to Calgary, getting in at about 8 pm I think. Hard to believe I’m writing this in Rome, with someone playing the according below our window, the sounds of Italy all around us, and in a day, we will back in Calgary. Air travel sure makes the world smaller.

Until next time….

Ciao.

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