Fri 22nd Sept
Our accommodation in the historic hilltop town of Orvieto for the next two nights was at the apartment La Cava dei Sogni that I had sourced through Booking.com and it was located inside the Old Town city walls. The one hour drive down from Citta Della Pieve was easy enough, but getting into the apartment was a little more challenging. The apartment was located on the edge of the old town and in an area with very tight, narrow, cobbled lanes. To make matters worse, our host did not speak a word of English, so trying to communicate our arrival via the phone was somewhat of a challenge. I eventually resorted to just saying “Booking.com”, and I think she then twigged that it was me, her next guest, rather than a wrong number. The rest of our communication was via Google translate and that went rather smoothly. Whilst I was doing this, poor Mark was getting all the luggage out of the car and dragging it down the busy cobbled street, and then hauling it up the one flight of stairs into the apartment. He now has a sore back and we will be searching for the Voltaren very shortly. The apartment though is absolutely lovely with lots of good natural light, two good sized bedrooms, two bathrooms and three balconies; one of the master bedroom, one off the kitchen and one off the lounge area. The place was spotlessly clean and in a great location with just a short stroll to plenty of bars, cafes and restaurants and the magnificent Duomo. This is a great place for anyone considering a stay in Orvieto and it is actually much brighter and nicer than what is reflected on the online websites.
Our son-in-law, Brett, will be pleased to know that our first activity was to do a couple of loads of washing. After that, we headed out to the area near the Duomo and had a bit of lunch before doing a 3 pm tour of the Orvieto Underground caves, a tour which we had done before with our son, Tom, in 2010 and which ended up being rather similar and familiar. These caves were inhabited by the Etruscans from around the 9th Century BC and then the Romans from around the 1st Century BC. It is believed they were vacant for about 7 centuries after the fall of the Roman Empire before being utilized during the Middle Ages. Walking through these tunnels that hold such a vast and varied history was very humbling and not lost on me. What was lost on me was what most of our heavily accented Italian guide was saying; I couldn’t understand much and Mark wasn’t much better so it was just as well we’d been before and I had my old blog entry as reference material! After the Underground we went on to visit the 14th Century Duomo di Orvieto as we hadn’t been inside when we were here last time. It is rather spectacular inside and well worth the five euro entry, although don’t expect much by way of explanation as the QR code provided only gave information in Italian.
We went back to our apartment for a bit of a break after visiting the Duomo and didn’t head out again until near 7 pm where we had a reservation at a nearby restaurant called Il Malandrino Bistrot which was rated 4.7 on Google but fell far short of our recent dinner experience in Citta della Pieve.
Sat 23rd Sept
It was an overcast morning but no rain, thankfully, so we were able to get out on a morning walk and there were plenty of cafes to choose from that were open at this hour which pleased Mark to no end. Ovieto Old Town seems to have a significant residential population, quite different from other medieval walled cities eg Bordeaux, and this maybe why it is well served with early opening cafes.
In the absence of any guided walking tours or self guided audio tours, we were using an article from GPSmyCity that had a suggestion of 11 sites worth seeing when in Orvieto. So our plan today was to finish working our way through that list. Our first stop for the day was Saint Patrick’s Well and this was an amazing architectural structure. It was built between 1527-1537 and was made up of over 30,000 bricks. It was commissioned by Pope Clement VII after he had fled to Orvieto following the sacking of Rome by Charles V as he feared Orvieto would need a secure water source in the event of any further siege. The well is about 54 meters deep and is a remarkable double spiral staircase structure with 248 steps that allowed pack animals to go up and down the stairs to fetch water without ever meeting.
Next to St Patrick’s Well was the mid 13th century Albornoz Fortress and this was commissioned by another Pope, Innocent VI, and was built to offer safety to a nearby church and cemetery. The ruin of the Fortress was free to enter and offered spectacular views across Orvieto.
There was still one item on the list to check off, the Torre del Moro, but we had a lot of packing up and sorting to do before our flight tomorrow so we headed back to the apartment to get that messy task out of the way. We made it to the Tower by around 4 pm and I was surprised to find it was just a massive climb to the top and then some sight seeing from the high elevation, nothing else but it was worth it though. From the Tower we went on to do some some wine tasting just nearby at Bottega Vera and this was a great way to while away an hour or two. We are now in possession of two of the four wines we tried but numerous jars of truffle pest and various oils. The only lament we had was that there was no where in Bondi like this shop.
We took the wines and produce back to the apartment and did some more packing before heading back out to dinner to try to the brewery / restaurant, Febo, we’d found on our walk this morning. Dinner turned out to be a great experience and one of the better ones for this trip so I’d highly recommend this venue if you’re ever in the area. However, there was one funny twist to the night. We had noted a large group, at least 20 or so, of young men come in to dine and they all looked the same; same hair cut, similar height, similar clothes and all rather well behaved. So we were guessing they were either a sports (soccer) team, but that was probably unlikely as they were all too well behaved, or as Mark suggested, they might be priests (novitiates). I couldn’t help myself so I asked our lovely waiter and he informed us that they were the new squad of Guardians of Finance. God knows what their remit was but all I could think was that this sounded liked like a new Dan Brown novel in the making! Watch out for ‘Guardians of Finance’ coming soon to a theater near you!
We’d loved our short visit to Orvieto and consider two nights and one day is plenty to see all of the major sites in the city. Our apartment was lovely and in a great location so I would highly recommend this as a base for any visit. Tomorrow we head off early to drive to Rome airport and return the car. Then we are on a 3 pm flight to Zurich for an overnight before heading to Bangkok for 3 nights and then on to home.
