Orvieto: Day 3

On October 9, we took a taxi van over to Civitavecchia (I will never learn to say that right!) to meet Eric and Kathy for the next part of our adventure. We ventured on to the Tuscany area, to a beautiful little town called Orvieto.

Here's a view of the town from a distance:

How is that for picturesque? It's like something out of a fairy tale!

The most beautiful part of Orvieto is the gorgeous duomo there. Here's a few pictures of it in all its glory. Just look at those colors!

We stayed at a beautiful Airbnb in the town with room enough for all of us that looked like it came out of a fairy tale itself.

Driving through the streets of Orvieto and the other little Italian towns was an interesting experience. There's essentially only one lane, and it's also where people walk around--there's no separate sidewalk or anything. The drivers and pedestrians there are unphased by it. Here's a video I took:

We started our time in Orvieto with a delicious lunch at Trattoria Vinosus. I tried the cabonara and thought it was delicious. Genuine Italian pasta is amazing.

On our first day, we took a tour of the caves beneath the city. Orvieto sits on a hill, but there is an entire network of caves underneath, all man-made. In the earliest days of the city, people dug the caves to access water. Many people still have a cave cellar in their home today. Our tour took us through some of the largest caves. We also went through some caves that used to house pigeons! Pigeon meat was popular and people would raise the birds for their meat.

Unfortunately I didn't get any pictures of the caves. (I was a little jumpy and afraid I would pass out again... The cave floors didn't look like a soft landing space. But everything was fine.)

Then we spent some time inside the duomo, which is lovely inside as well as out.

I really loved this statue. The emotions captured are very lifelike.

I don't remember the name of the restaurant where we went to dinner... but it was great. I opted for a traditional Orvieto dish, wild boar cooked in a dark chocolate sauce. As Amber said, it was basically a pregnant woman's dream. I think we should cook all meat in chocolate sauce!

That night I got the best sleep I'd had since we landed. Jet lag gone, finally! It also helped that the window shutters blocked out 100% of the light. The only downside was that it was so dark when we woke up, we assumed it was still early morning and went back to sleep. We woke up very late for our adventures the next day (but well rested and happy!)