Hitting the Rails

Ciao a tutti!

We went to Saint Peter's in Chains first, which was quite near our hotel actually, and a good thing we did. It was nice and peaceful when we went in, but as we were leaving 2 tour groups were coming in. Trajan's area was kind of a bust though, as most of it is under construction/excavation.

At the train station, I got the self-service machine to give us the correct tickets (whoo-hoo!) then we had to wait to find out which platform our train left from. Since we ended up in Orvieto and the conductor punched our tickets, we must have had the right one! I realized just in time we had an assigned carriage/seats so we did not embarrass ourselves by sitting in the wrong spot.

Orvieto is lovely. Their pay phones are a pain, but the town itself is quiet and charming. We basically did without a map here, getting terrifically lost--but that was the whole point. We did hit most of the major sites in two days--there are only about 7 or 8 and half of those are like 3 rooms each. I think we're up to about 800-900 pictures taken and those danged batteries keep dying like fleas. The apartment we stayed at was in a really good location. On a quiet side street that connects to the main road through town...if this town can really be said to HAVE a main road.

Orvieto doesn't need street names! You just navigate by landmark, hotel, and restaurant! (Actually the street name is above, but we saw these "tourist" signs everywhere and they were a lot more useful than a map!)

The apartment itself is a good size, though the bathroom is laid out a bit oddly with no storage (and unfortunately, no spare rolls of toilet paper). Lots of napkins in the kitchen though. The 'hostess' picked us up at top of town and was very nice, though we only saw her the once. Her english was better than my italian but not by much, which was a lot of fun as we fumbled our way through two languages. It was a nice change to have people talking to me in broken english and italian, whereas in Rome, my 'buona sera' got "good night" in response. Argh!

This is why Orvieto was built where it was. See those cliffs? Straight down!

There really wasn't any food in the apartment, so we adopted the charming Italian custom of going across the street to the bar for our morning cappucinos. We also had our first caffe lungo, as it was quite a bit colder here, though still sunny. And we tried the hot chocolate, which is sort of a chocolate sauce/weak pudding rather than an actual drink! All this warmed us up to have two rounds of gelato on Friday! See Hannah? You just have to know how to time it. ;-)

Almost the first thing we did was go down St. Patrick's Well which was quite interesting, though probably only needs to be done once in a lifetime. We also found a small little church on Saturday. I've forgotten the name but it was a charming little place with frescos painted on the columns as well as the walls. I think dad and I liked it better than the main Duomo even.

Orvieto is the city of cats. I think we saw over 30. Lots of pics for you Kitty!

Almost out of internet time so that's it for now--next time I'll tell you all about Firenze!