10/26–Lugnano in Teverina

Obviously we were tired, because we slept really late today!  As in after 9:00.  We’re shocked when we see the time, not that we have anything to do on a schedule, but still, that is so not like us.  We cut our morning routine a little short (only 1 coffee for me, 2 for Ed) and finally manage to get out the door around 10:30 or so for our next day of excursions in Umbria.  Today we are heading to Lugnano in Teverina which is said to be a small town that started as a feudal village with Romanesque architecture. Sounds like a winner to us.

We follow the GPS through the countryside, over hill and dale and up to Lugnano.  I’ve scoped out a parking lot right outside of town, but the darn GPS keeps taking us around the town on the outside ring road (and I’m using the word road very loosely – more like ring “path”) before trying to make us either a) take a hard u turn that is absolutely impossible or b) turn into this little doorway (really, truly a doorway) that access some teeny cobblestone lanes inside the walls.  NOT!

Finally, we reconnoiter in a parking lot at the bottom of the walls, and manage to find our way back to this little parking area we had seen while previously circling the town.  Sheesh.  The only silver lining is that we don’t have to drive into town – oh – and the views from up here are fantastic.

Parked and ready to go, we head for what I believed to be a stairwell I thought I saw someone walking up as we passed.  Would you go into this stairwell?

Yeah, that’s what we thought, but you know us!  We are mostly intrepid, so in – and up we go.  It’s a totally bizarre little staircase, that’s relatively clean, a little dark in some places, and with bathrooms on two different landings.  Very interesting!  The stairwell lets us out onto another, much better, ring road (how would we get to that road?) and another set of walls.  There is an entrance lane, which we take, hoping we’ll be able to find our way out.  As luck would have it, this little lane ends right at the center center – the square with the city hall and church we have come to see.  Perfect!

The church, Santa Maria Assunta, dates from the 12th century has withstood much renovation to still maintain its Romanesque architecture and Roman marble.  Outside, it appears stuffed into a non-descript corner of the Pennone Piazza, but inside you can still see the grandeur of the marble carvings, columns and fantastic mosaics on the walls before the nave and the floors.

Pretty neat little stop in the countryside. Unfortunately the TI isn’t open and we don’t have much more information about the town, so we walk back to the car, navigating by a neat old clock tower and trying to figure out what the many round silk hanging decorations are around the town.

Who knows?  And there is no one to ask, as the town is pretty much empty as we make our way back to the creepy stairwell and out in the parking lot for the car.  Oh well, maybe we’ll figure the decorations out one day.  For now, we’re off to Amelia.

10/25–Pitigliano afternoon, Orvieto evening

The village is fairly empty as we stroll down the cobblestone lanes of Pitigliano just before noon.  We window shop all the ceramics stores, eventually stopping into one with some of the most creative pieces we’ve seen.  They had huge lamps and pots and statues, with all sorts of different finishes – and these awesome dishes with leaves embedded in the glaze.  I had to break down and buy one just to have and figure out how to do it!  I had the best conversation with the woman who owns the store, completely in Italian!  I understood about 1/3, but it was enough. Her husband is the main artist, Roberto Polidoric, but I believe she said she also made pieces, and made the coaster that I purchased. It was all terribly fun and I only wish I had the nerve to ask to take pictures of their pieces – they were totally unique. (After we got back to the apartment I found their website, and they actually give classes. How fun would that have been?)

After our little encounter, we just wandered though the town snapping pictures here and there of the pretty alleyways, churches and buildings.

We make the circuit, passing the synagogue museum still with the polizia guards,UZIs in hand, outside, then back to the main square, where even though TripAdvisor said this one restaurant would be open – they are not until 12:30.  The chef tells us 10 minutes, so we take advantage of the great day and sit on a bench in the sunshine to wait.

Trattoria il Grillo is worth the wait.  We were hoping it wasn’t going to be too terribly touristy and over priced, since it is located right off the main square in Pitigliano, and we were delightfully surprised. The delightful owner (we think, and who we called Mr. Grillo to ourselves of course), greeted and seated us (as the first customers).  He was so sweet and nice, and patient with our pidgen Italian.  We ordered the Mixed Antipasti Grillo, which was huge and nicely appointed with different meat selections, bruschetta and a great mixture of sundried tomatoes and pickled radicchio in oil.  Yum.  We also shared the Chinghiale stew with prunes – absolutely yummy and as usual, far too much food!

Good thing our afternoon plans include walking through Parco Orsini – that will burn off some of this great food!  We traverse the square and hike up the hill to retrieve our car.  We are especially glad we have this teeny little Panda car, since the wide open parking space we left the car in is now squeezed between two other not so little cars.  But while we think it will take forever to maneuver out of the space, its so tiny, it takes one turn (not even a reverse and turn) and we’re on the road.  Of course we don’t have too far to travel, only down the hill a bit to the next parking lot where we can walk up to Parco Orsini. 

We’re lucky and find a space right up front, and commence our trek.  Up the road, around the hairpin curve, then up the steep little lane to the chained park entrance.  The Park consists of statues carved out of the tufa, commissioned by the Orsini’s.  Everything we’ve read about it says it is spectacular, but sadly abandoned by the town commune – thus the chain at the entrance.  They designed this great area, but with nowhere to park, and no access so no one uses it. Which is a shame, because there is a huge picnic area, with about 50 picnic benches, all over grown and decaying by disuse.  A stone path lines the area, again, overgrown and starting to disappear under the leaves, weeds and debris.

We weed hop our way through the picnic area to find the viewpoint looking over the Maremma valley.  It’s gorgeous – but oh so scary!  The stone viewing area just drops off into nothing, with no warning or guardrails, making us quite leery of getting very close to it.  But, still, it is a nice sunny spot to sit (or stand) and stare out over the countryside.

Traipsing all over that park, though the weeds and the grass, along the fenceline, everywhere –and can never find one hint of a carved tufa statue.  We found a place that looked like something may have been removed recently.  There is also a poorly maintained trail leading into the woods away from the picnic area, which after a few hundred feet becomes completely overgrown – so we’re not about to try hiking through there.  It is probably where the statues are located, but without the proper hiking gear – or better knowledge of the area – it is not on our have to do list – so we abstain.

It’s nice enough walking about in the sunshine in the picnic area, and after we’ve explored every inch, making sure we missed nothing – we walk back down to the car park and head toward home, only semi-defeated from the hiking disappointments today!

The road home is filled with little tiny roads – one particular 4KM stretch of one-lane country paths through the farmland which finally dumps us out onto a “better” road.  Of course, the idea that we call a little tiny 1 and 1/2 lane road “better” is particularly humorous, thank heavens Ed likes to drive with the crazy Italians! At least it gives us plenty of beautiful scenery and lots of farm animals to see.

We find a new way to come back through the city, which seems to be a bit easier than the original way I had mapped it.  If you exclude the pesky school children who won’t move when you are politely driving through narrow little lanes (one almost lost her backpack to our sideview mirror – but only after she looked right at us and decided not to move out of the way), it was quite the smooth re-entry into Orvieto.  Punto safely housed in the garage, we retire to the apartment to rejuvenate for a bit before heading out in search of dinner.

Tonight we have no specific plans, which means we sort of wander through town, checking out all the menus posted around.  We’ve been to so many of these places, that we know most of the menus – but it is still not an easy decision.  We finally settle on Pozzo Etrusco Giovanni, where we have always had such excellent food and service.  Of course we’re early, so once again we hang out in the escalator building waiting for the 7:30 opening hour, watching all the waiters come out to smoke their pre-service cigarettes. 

We finally venture in, and are, as always, greeted enthusiastically and shown to a nice two-top, even without having reservations (we find this far easier since we eat so early!).  Tonight, we are forcing ourselves to be a little different with our mains – it seems we always go for the same dishes (mostly because, of course, we can’t get them at home, but still, we need to stretch a little now and then… LOL).  For our starter, of course, we split the Antipasti – a fantastic mix of meat, but also different appetizers like an artichoke tart, cheese melted over eggplant on crostini, some sort of layered cheese and vegetable roll, a decadent pate and this great mayonnaise and olive spread.  It was excellent and so filling, I could have been quite done – but no – I had decided to blow the carb count all to hell by ordering Tagliatelle Giovanni – the house specialty made of (wait for it) pasta with cacao (yes, chocolate pasta!) with a mascarpone sauce topped with prosciutto.  Oh my. And oh my, it was so worth it – even if I couldn’t even beginning to finish it and Ed had to help even after he finished his excellent duck breast.

I think I need to go run tomorrow morning! 

Fully stuffed, we stop for a nightcap at the Blue Bar and hang out with Anthony for a couple of wines and beers, a few songs on the guitar (he’s getting really good), and lots of talk about families and life and how to move forward.  A thoroughly wonderful end to our evening.  And a lovely stroll through the empty streets to our cozy apartment for the rest of the night.

10/25–Pitigliano Redux

Sleep cures all ills – and we are up and at’em early (Ed earlier than I).  On the road around 9ish, our plans are to visit the outdoor museum and hike a bit of the vie cave trails before lunch in Pitigliano.  The vie cave are literally “cuts” through the tufa built by Etruscans, which always connect to a necropolis.  They surround the town of Pitigliano and are reportedly great hikes, although some we researched were pretty steep.  We’ve chosen one of the shorter ones to explore today.

Since we previewed the route out of our garage, the drive out of town is simple, and the GPS sets us on the correct course, which we’ve driven before.  Out through the countryside, past farmland and the big lake, then into Pitigliano where we turn away from the town and wind our way down switch back roads toward the open air museum, stopping at a viewpoint for an excellent view of Pitigliano built up upon the tufa.

Driving on, we reach the open air museum right after 10am, which is their opening time. The parking lot is empty, save for one camper type van, which is a little worrisome.  Upon finding the ticket office, we understand why – the museum is only open on the weekends now.  Darn it!  Their website said NOTHING about that – seriously!  Ok, so one more epic fail in Pitigliano, but we still have le vie cave, so all is not lost.  We retrace our steps and park in the little alcove above la via cave Madonna d. Grazie.  It’s only 450 meters to the necropolis, and there are stairs from the parking area, so we begin our descent pretty easily.  But once the stairs end, oh my!  It’s it totally treacherous, walking down a steep path made completely out of concrete and rock, oh, and completely covered over in moss.  Yeah, this is not what we expected, not to mention neither of us have really good hiking shoes.  Ed has skater shoes (totally flat soles) and I have worn out Sauconies.  Not ideal.

The scenery is amazing, great views of Pitigliano and fabulous rock formations that the Etruscans carved the road into, but still…it’s not all that fabulous. And while we’d love to see the necropolis, its certainly not worth a twisted, or worse, broken ankle.  We’re normally quite adventurous, but we give up on this excursion halfway down, turning back – in the company of a little friend – to reach the car without incident and proceed into Pitigliano proper.

Back up the switch back road, hanging the treacherous u-turn at the city’s entrance, we find parking right away, and of course, we remember we don’t need to pay between 1 and 3, so we only buy a couple of hours time.  Our new plans are to visit the Orsini Palace, since we weren’t able to visit on our last trip. 

The palace dates back to the 12th century, the basic structure built by the Counts of Aldobrandeschi of Sovana.  The daughter of one of the counts married Romano Orsini, came to live in Pitigliano and ordered the palace/fortress built to include 3 circular towers and walls closing in the courtyards, thus beginning the Orsini reign over Pitigliano.  In the mid-1400’s, the fortress is demolished and the grand palace is built in its place as the resident for the counts.  Over the years, the palace has been updated to accommodate new firearms protections, additional bastions and other fortress like protections. By the early 1600’s it is ceded to the Medici family and then to the Lorena family where halls were divided, false ceilings installed and new windows opened up the facade.

Eventually the a portion of the palace was given to the Bishop of Sovana as his residence, and slowly the entire palace became his abode.  A restoration begun in the 1980s transferred the working offices of the Diocese to the northern side of the complex in order to turn the rest of the lodging into a museum.  Even though we are only allowed into half the complex (with no photos allowed, I might add) it is still a staggeringly huge place.  We first explore the Zodiac room with an incredible fresco painted ceiling representing the zodiac (that was just restored in 2012).  Actually, all throughout the palace it is fascinating to see where restoration efforts have taken place – half the original art is still in place, half restored.  Some of our favorite rooms were the Noble and Count rooms, with amazing wood painted ceilings and frescoes.  A great example of redecorating is also found in the last room, the Sala P. Aldi, where you can see the original frescoed ceiling and wall decorations, covered over with the “new” style decorations (new meaning 1700’s!).

The most fascinating of the rooms though, was room 14, the no-name room where different instruments of torture were on display.  Hmmmm…who was into this? This Orsini’s or the Bishops?  We’ll leave you to ponder that question!  At the bottom of the palace is the Oil production room, Olialia. Here are the original millstones and presses for the production of olive oil, plus a poster providing information on how it was all used.  A pretty interesting journey back into time.

We’ve spent an hour or so inside, and now it is time to wander the little village lanes wasting time until finding lunch.

10/24–Orvieto Evening

After I take a nap and Ed gets caught up on the news, twitter and Jose Andres (he’s reading We Fed a Nation, Jose’s book about his World Kitchen Project in Puerto Rico), we wander out toward Antica Cantina, L’osteria delle Donne (the restaurant of women) for dinner. The restaurant is owned, operated and staffed by women, and has a great reputation for gluten free and allergy specific meals.  Not that we need any of that, but the food gets stellar ratings, and I’ve wanted to try them out since last year – when it seemed a bit too far to walk.  (Not really, but your perceptions get skewed when you are spoiled with dozens of restaurants within a few blocks from your apartment.)

So, off we go to the restaurant which TripAdvisor says is open at 7. Not.  You know…between TripAdvisor and Google, you get bad information every which way you turn.  Sigh.  So, now we are stuck waiting for half an hour until they open.  We continue to traverse Corso Cavour, the main street of Orvieto, looking at different little places to have a drink, and stumble on Pub Al Tempio Etrusco – mainly because they had the word “pub” in their name.  Four steps down, we enter a nicely done pizza pub with red brick painted walls and a lovely bartender/server/owner who speaks perfect English to my perfectly awful Italian!  We end up with beer and wine for 8.5 Euros, and he brings us this great rosemary focaccia flat bread fresh out of the oven to nibble on free of charge.  Its like a super crispy layered tortilla drizzled with olive oil, salt and that fabulous rosemary.  Oh, we’re in love.  If only we weren’t waiting to go to dinner.  We’d finish off the whole thing!  Just fantastic!  We will definitely be coming back here one night for dinner – since the hospitality and the food and drink quality were excellent.

7:30 finally rolls around, we bid arrivederci to our “guy” and wander up the street to Antica Cantina, where there are already 2 Asian girls seated and ordering.  We are the only other customers and we settle up the 2 stairs in what we are calling the “upper” dining room.  It has a great vibe, with cool artwork (the open wooden frame on tufa looking walls and the book lined shelves in the window alcove – plus a window onto the open kitchen.  How can you go wrong?

The food and the service match the ambience.  Absolutely fantastic. The owner – who serves us –has the greatest personality, switching seamlessly from English to Italian (oh, how I wish I could do that!).  The food was incredible – gluten free or not, we had a wonderful starter of Prosciutto and I had carciofi in oil (preserved fresh last year – because of course it is not artichoke season, the owner informed me).  For the main, Ed had Cinghiale stew – which was spectacular.  And of course beer and wine – a reasonably priced half carafe.  Jet lag and big carafes of wine – the perfect antidote!

After our fantastic dinner, we meander back to the apartment, through the empty Orvieto streets…

…this is why we love this place!  Collapsing on the bed, we manage to stay awake long enough to make it through one Law and Order on the home cable before blissfully falling asleep in a real bed that will salve our jet lagged bodies.

10/23–10/24 off to Orvieto

Wow.  Six months has gone by fast!  It doesn’t even feel like that long since our last trip, but it’s fall, and once again we are on the road.  Back to Orvieto to spend a few days before boarding the Azamara Pursuit for our ride home.  Our travel day starts out beautifully – sunny, warmish and just gorgeous – makes it hard to leave! 

The planes all work fine and on time.  We spent our 2 hour layover in Atlanta in the Priority lounge – the membership came free with our new credit card, nice perk since the United passes we get always expire before we can manage to use them.  Once at the gate, we had hoped to “upgrade” to comfort seats on the long haul, because it showed the entire section open – but by flight time, every seat was full – so no way we were giving up our 2 seats on the window aisle.

Boarding was unusually chaotic.  Beyond the fact that the zones on Delta are a pain, everybody sort of clogged the gate, so when a particular zone was called it was just disorderly.  They were also using a new facial recognition system, where you didn’t have to even show your boarding pass – just hold your passport in your hand in case you needed it.  You stood in front of the camera, snapped a picture and voila! It matched your face to whatever they have in their system and out popped a boarding coupon. Cool, but in a totally big brother scary kind of way.  One of the cameras wasn’t working, so we thought it would be even more of a nightmare, but much to our surprise, once you made it to the machines, the boarding process went quite smoothly.

We made it aboard quickly, got settled in, and watched the crazy procession of travelers straggle on until we were all boarded and pushed back from the gate. We watched movies (Solo for me, The Chicago Bears for Ed), ate dinner (great wine and FULL pours, chicken salad for me, chicken picatta for Ed), then tried to sleep.  I actually watched most of The Chicago Bears, but didn’t make it through before falling fitfully asleep.  The rest of the flight passed in that semi-oblivion of sleep and half-sleep (not including me getting sick half way through – which we won’t even go into – only lasted through the flight, I was perfectly fine after we landed – so we are figuring that chicken salad was NOT the way to go.  )

Passport control was a breeze!  They have a new automated system that we can now use too (USA hasn’t always been included), and we sped right through.  Bags were already on the carousel when we arrived.  We walked the mile and a half to EuropCar (well, not really that far, but its a hike – sort of felt good after sitting for so long though). Got a diesel “upgrade” then proceeded to the garage to wait for the car to be washed and delivered to us.

All in all, a very smooth process and we were out an on the road a little before noon.  Drive was easy (because we’ve done it so much!).  One pit stop for a wake up Coke Zero and one for the grocery story in Orvieto Scalo, and we rolled into Orvieto proper at 2:15.  Again, we’ve been here often enough that we know the way, even if that way are the tiniest little alleys of streets.  We are staying at the Casa Orchidea this year, which is more centrally located than the other two apartments we’ve booked previously.  We are steps from Via del Duomo with a decent garage this time.

After ringing the bell next to the huge wooden double doors of the apartment, we are met by Filippo who directs us to the garage, helps bring our luggage and explains the apartment to us.  He’s adorable and helpful, and gives us an instructions and call sheet should we need him.  We’ve been conversing with “Roberta” through AirBnB, but notice there is no Roberta on the call sheet.  Hmmm…wonder who she is then?  Guess it doesn’t really matter, just a strange little factoid of dealing with international bookings, I suppose.

The apartment is as advertised, totally well equipped with an adorable kitchen designed into a great design, with virtually hidden appliances.

The bedroom is nicely done, and the bathroom completely updated with rain shower head (which has an electronic settings pad in the shower that appears to turn the shower different colors? but which we can’t figure out how to work) and gorgeous tile designs on the walls and floors.  We were initially concerned because we had not paid attention to the air conditioning because of the season (there is none), but its really warm today for October (nicely warm, in the high 70’s, but still).  No need to worry though, even with the windows open it is cool – almost cold – in the apartment when we arrive in the dead of the afternoon heat. 

We bid Filippo arrivederci, settle in quickly, then go out for a walk around town in the beautiful sunshine. First we walk away from the Duomo to get our bearings and figure out how we will have to drive out of here tomorrow.  Most of the street/alleys are one-way, which can make it slightly challenging.  But it seems to be a straight shot, so then we reverse course and head back to the front of the Duomo. It is a perfect day for Duomo photos, and even though we have a million, we can’t resist one of two more…

It’s also the perfect time of day.  Still warm and sunny, and most of the day trippers are leaving – which is why we love this town. The Japanese tourists are running up Via del Duomo, the guide a good 2 blocks ahead, and the rest of the crowds are heading toward the square for their buses leaving us blissfully semi-alone.  Yes, Orvieto is touristy, but at night, it is a different world, and we love the ambiance and the people who remain here living, and making a living.

As we wander about working the kinks out of our jet-lagged bodies, we stumble on Battalani Sapori, one of the Tipico Produtti shops that are abundant here.  We establish that it has been here forever, and we’ve apparently just ignored the storefront the many times we’ve passed. Today, they are offering 3 dried salamis for 15 Euros and the proprietor offers us samples – which of course sells us!  Walking way with 3 salamis – 2 with truffles, 1 Cinghiale – we find a little bar/deli and sit outside with a glass of wine and pint of beer to watch the world walk by.  Then wander back to the apartment to rest for a bit before trolling for our dinner.

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updated livewriter? maybe.