I barely made it though, and all b/c of daylight savings time. On Saturday night before I went to bed, I set the clock on my iPhone back one hour. I set my alarm for 6:30am since I had to meet the bus at Termini station at 7:45am. I woke up around 6:20am and decided to get out of bed and check the time online to make sure my iPhone didn’t do something funny during the night… sure enough, it was 7:20am NOT 6:20am! My phone automatically adjusted the time at 3am so my clock went back two hours instead of one. I had just enough time to brush my teeth, throw on some clothes and sprint down the street to the bus (thankfully I live only 15 minutes away, add one reason why its good to live in SanLo). I arrived at 7:50am but I wasn’t the last one… a lot of people seemed to have clock issues that morning. We actually left one poor girl behind who arrived at Termini at 8:02am and couldn’t find the bus.
Our first stop was Orvieto. There were about 20 of us on the trip, lead by Marina’s language teacher who was an excellent tour guide and gave us a full explanation of all the sights. Sadly my Italian is still really shaky (aka nonexistent) so Marina had to translate for me. And as English is her second language it was easier for her to do the translation in French. So I got an Italian lesson AND got to practice my French, not bad. We saw the Duomo (where I learned about those ever popular Italian names),
wandered around the tiny streets (I love Europe and their little cobblestone streets, barely big enough for two people to walk through), saw the first home of the Popes before they built Vatican City (who knew!),
and took in the incredible view from the walled edge of Orvieto.
Afterwards, we had 2 free hours for lunch. A group of us branched off in search of a Slow Food restaurant recommended by my new friend Elyssa (an expat who’s been living in Rome with her Italian husband for about 8 years). It was completely booked so we went back out into the street to try to figure out where to eat. An old Italian couple were leaning out of their window watching the street (why do old folks love to do that?) and called out to us, asking us where we were from (we made quite a colorful group). We rattled off the list of countries (England, America, Holland, France…) and chatted with them for a bit. We asked for their recommendation for lunch and they pointed us to Ristorante Cocco, a tiny place just across the street. We got there just before a huge crowd of Italians showed up, filling the rest of the tables. And it was one of the best meals I had in a long time… the 9 of us shared 3 bottles of vino rosso della casa, 2 bottles of water, a starter and main dish/pasta each (I had caprise to start followed by tagliatelle with black truffles… SOO good) and paid only 11 Euros per person! Comparably, the other group when to a place near the Duomo (tourist central) and paid 17 Euros for "5 pieces of ravioli and a soda".
We rolled out of the restaurant completely stuffed and sleepy from all the wine to meet up with the rest of the group for a tour of the Duomo (it was closed in the morning for mass) before moving on to the next village.
Civita di Bagnoregio is nicknamed The City of the Dead b/c in its 2,500 years it has survived 24 earthquakes, Nazi occupation and bombings and is still standing... for now. It's literally this tiny medieval village perched on the very top of a mountain.
The eerie thing is that mountain beaneath it is finally starting to crumble so they don’t know how long the village will survive (parts of it have already fallen off!). Its connected to mainland Italy by a long, narrow bridge that snakes its way up the mountain to the city gates. It took us about 20 minutes to walk there (mainly uphill, my legs are so sore today!) but once you get inside its the most incredible sight.
The village looks frozen in time—you can walk the entire place in about 10 minutes, everything is rustic and ancient, including the people who live there.
There are one or two B&Bs, a couple of trattorias and a church in the center of the piazza, naturally the social hub of the village. There are about 14 residents now (bless their brave souls!) but crowds of people from the village down below swarm the piazza in the evenings; eating roasted chestnuts, listening to music and hanging around chatting with each other.
It was incredible… and to know that the village won’t be around forever makes it even cooler that I actually got to see it.
So the trip was fantastic—even the 2 hour drive was pleasant, just watching the beautiful Italian countryside. We made it back to Rome around 7:30pm. An exhausting but wonderful day.
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Wow, from your pictures Umbria and Lazio are stuning. Looks like you had a great time.
ReplyDeleteStacey, you've motivated me to take charge of my life, and I've started looking for jobs and French language courses. If you don't mind, could you send me an email at stupidfresh95@hotmail.com. I'd like to pick your brain about working in Paris (yes I know it's hard to find a job).