Capuchio Designs

Wednesday, June 2, 2010

Buongiorno!

Today we had a travel day to the Castel Gandolfo, which is the Pope’s summer residence.  We stopped once again for a mid-morning break at a “Auto Grill”, just think Stuckey’s.  Little, short, Italian women would cut right in to the front of the long bathroom line without blinking an eye.  Thank goodness we had our own version on our tour, albeit an Aussie, who told them to “go back to the end of the line” and wouldn’t allow them to cut.  Hooray for spunky Aussie!  You wait in line to pay, then you wait in another line for them to fill your order.  Tiny cups of espresso and tiny tables = why bother?

Castel Gandolfo – Pope’s Summer Residence

This area  is located on the edge of a caldera, or an extinct volcano, which is now filled in with water.

There were quaint, cobblestoned streets and this is where we were introduced to a tasty porchetta (pork), sandwich.  This is meat from a pig that has been stuffed with spices and roasted all day long.

There was a wedding at St. Marco’s Basilica in the main piazza.   The wedding was colorful , especially  the shiny lavender suit one of the guests was sporting.  He was totally pimped out Italian style.  Woo hoo!

After lunch we stopped in a celebrated wine town of Frascati for some gelato.

Frascati

Orvieto

Our final stop for the day was the ancient little hilltop town of Orvieto.  When our tour bus pulled up to a vast, empty, parking lot below, and an immense rock fortress encircling the village above, we had no idea how stunning the surrounding countryside would be from the birds-eye view from up above.

After an elevator ride (of all things) up  through the rock, we were surprised by this view of the Umbrian countryside that took my breath away.  There were rolling hills and farmland, and beauty just as far as the eye can see from that vantage of 150 ft. or so above ground.  Just think of Tuscany, which is a neighboring region.

We followed our guide through winding, narrow, cobblestoned walkways, or roads, since diminutive cars drive on them, to our 1800’s  hotel room at the Aquila Blanca.  Although this hotel had no frills, it did have a lovely cotton chenille bedspread trimmed with lace,walls that were 3 ft. thick, and shuttered windows that opened up to the cobblestone below.

We walked with our tour guide to the Cathedral de Orvieto.  The sides of it were black and white striped (just think jail uniforms), due to the stone selection to build it.  The front of it was ornate and gorgeous, much the opposite of the inside that was quite plain in comparison to the many other churches we’ve seen.  Because of our inappropriate dress, shorts (think sinner) and exposing our knees (Lord have mercy!), we were not allowed to tour the inside.

We next went into a ceramic shop, for which Orvieto is famous, and discovered that a hand painted lasagna dish cost $150 Euros, or $180 American dollars.  Way too expensive … whoa!

After that, we went down into a wine cellar in one of the numerous underground tunnels in the city.  There were thousands of dusty, cobwebbed bottles of wine and huge wooden wine barrels with lots of mold.  Yew … kinda creepy!

Dinner was at a “fast-food” like restaurant where we sat at the end of a long narrow hallway so that we could people watch out the big window at the end.  Little did we know that we were people watched by everybody passing by the window which displayed a beautiful red and silver chocolate candies.  This was kinda embarrassing as many of our tour group walked by and waved to the two people (us) eating yucky hummus ravioli drenched in olive oil and butter.  We could of kicked our fellow travelers who said this was a good restaurant.  Oh well … i cossi – “it is what it is”.

Bella! Beautiful

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