Day 8 - Orvieto - Civita de Bagnoregio - Siena

             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.

Day 7 - Sorrento - Orvieto

          We had another early start as we wanted to get to Orvieto as soon as possible and this was going to be one of our longest travel days with connections in Naples and Rome.  We took the circumvesuviana train back towards Naples with all the locals.  Despite Bernardo chastising me for making my friends travel in such a rugged way, I enjoyed this down to earth experience.

          After arriving in modern Orvieto we had to take a funicular tram to the top of the hill city and search for our hotel.  We made it to Orvieto just in time for everything to close for lunch.  This was by far the hotel with the best view (well – maybe Lake Como could compete).  We were greeted at our Catholic church-run hotel by Padre Tonino.  This is the man with whom I had emailed for our reservation.  When I had asked him if we needed to give him a deposit for our reservation he said that our email conversation was enough.  It was like a good old-fashioned hand shake agreement.  Our room had an AMAZING view overlooking the Tuscan hillside and a 12 ^th century monastery.  (It looked like a castle).  Padre Tonino was so accommodating and kind.  He asked me to collect everyone’s 70 Euro fee for the night and then agreed to wake up early at 6:30 am. the next morning to set us up a special breakfast since we had an early bus to catch. After leaving our luggage at the “hotel” we raced out into the “town” to find something to eat.

          Following our Rick Steve’s guide we ended up at a panificio in town that was just closing.  After some Italian charm and a conversation about cowboys and the great American frontier, the proprietor agreed to make us 7 prosciutto or salami sandwiches and a vegetarian for Sara.  They were super charming.  She told me that they didn’t even know they had been listed in the Rick Steve’s guide and that unlike most guides, they didn’t need to pay the book company to be listed which made the recommendation that much more credible.  We sat and enjoyed our lunch in the shadows of one of the prettiest cathedrals of our entire trip.  We’d come back later when it was opened.

           We climbed the nearby tower, nothing compared with the steps in St. Peters, but a beautiful vista of Orvieto and the Tuscany hills beyond.  Thy misty air muted the colorful hills.  Just to keep us on our toes, the bell tower went off as we were getting ready to leave making us all jump (except Jeff who still wasn’t going to climb anything taller than the stairs in the hotel).  By now the church had opened and we were able to get a look inside.  After this we walked across town to climb down into Patrick’s well.  A double helix well built in the 15^th century for the city to get water and protect it from the siege of the barbarians who were trying to get their hands on the Pope who was hanging out in Orvieto at the time (hence the beautiful cathedral).  Although architecturally interesting the well was, just a well.   It was a bit spooky to look down the well to the water 500 feet below as the windows were close to the ground with no bars or protection.

            We still had time to kill before the cathedral reopened so we decided to walk ½ around the city at the base of the walls.  We exited the city and descended to a foot path that led around the city.  The entire city circumference is only 3 miles.  The cliff height was impressive.  We passed others out exercising along the route, but it was mostly just the same scenery for 1 ½ miles.  After some discussion, we figured out how to re-enter the city on the opposite side.  By now it was dusk and time to start looking for a place to eat, which we’ve learned that for a group of 8 can be a task.  I enjoyed getting a bit lost in the twisted streets as we wandered around.  We eventually made it back to the main drag and found a nice restaurant with red and white checkered table clothes for our meal.