Once
again we had a very early morning.
The only bus we could catch to Civita
left at 7:15 a.m. Padre Tonino
agreed to prepare our breakfast early for us, where we paid him and left our
baggage in the breakfast room. I
could have stayed in this hotel for another night. It was quiet, simple, quaint, and had amazing views. I was a bit uncertain if there would be
a bus since the schedule was confusing to read with all sorts of exceptions for
weekend, vacation and school schedules etc. Lucky for me (an us) the bus did show up and we
enjoyed/relaxed for the 1 hour bus ride to Civita. Some days I feel like I’m just a blind tourist guide hoping
that we find our destination. This
morning was one of those occasions.
Although I thought there was a bus to take us to Civita, we couldn’t
seem to find it and no one seemed to know what I was talking about. It didn’t help that every time I said
Civita I put the accent on the wrong syllable and everyone either corrected me
or gave me an incomprehensible look.
After several minutes of asking, looking, and walking in circles, we
determined that the walk would only take us 20 minutes so why not! It was a quiet, sleepy morning with not
much movement. As we got closer to
the foot bridge that would carry us across to this TINY hill town, we were
startled by a braying donkey that we hadn’t seen standing behind a fence. It seemed like an appropriate welcome
as the residents of this town used to cross the natural footpath by
donkey. During WWII, this foot
bridge was bombed out and now is replaced by a 4 foot wide walking bridge,
suitable for motorcycles and small ATVs as well. We arrived in Civita early, around 9:00. No one was in the city and nothing was
open. It only took about 20
minutes to walk around the entire place.
It was very picturesque with amazing views and lovely buildings with
potted plants. But there was
nothing to do. Just take
pictures. We decided rather than
wait around for 2 hours waiting for a lunch place to open we would return to
Orvieto, eat lunch and then continue onto to Siena. After retracing our steps we were back in Orvieto in a
couple of hours.
We
had a couple of hours to kill, so
we split up to enjoy Ovieto. It
was perfectly pleasant wandering around Orvieto. Eric and I found a small café and ordered a hot chocolate
with cookies and sat outside to drink, watch people, and relax. For lunch we found a yummy cafeteria
style restaurant and enjoyed vegetables and salad, outside in a small atrium. Since we had some extra time we decided
to catch the earlier train to Siena, but the earlier train was delayed by more
than an hour. We spent a long hour
sitting outside on the hard benches of the Orvieto train station listening to
the recording telling us over and over that our train had been delayed. It’s a good thing we had good friends
to sit and pass the time with.
We
arrived to Siena later than we hoped
and hauled our luggage into the city just as it was getting dark. It was a bit of a haul and the streets
were all circular so once we entered the old city it was a difficult to know
which direction we were headed. We
found our hotel, which was just 1 street off of the Campo – the main square and
old civic center of the city.
Unlike other cities where the church is always the center of the city,
in Siena it’s the Campo.
On our
way to dinner we passed a light and bubble show happening on the Campo. Later the next day we watched as they
rolled up real sod and loaded up real trees and geraniums left over from the
festivities the day before. For
dinner we sat in an outdoor, covered dining area. We got harassed from the waiter for asking for balsamic
vinegar and oil to eat with our bread; apparently that is a lot more American
than Italian.
After
dinner we separated and each couple enjoyed an evening wandering and getting
lost in the streets of Siena. It
was defiantly a happening town with lots of people out walking the streets late
at night; a stark difference from Orvieto. Our hotel was mediocre, but clean.
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