May 22
Looking Over Tuscan Countryside Of Orvieto
Had breakfast at the Internet cafe/modern wine bar while trying to finish a post finally from the Cinque Terre. Afterwards, we went to the mall/market that comes to town once a week on Fridays, and the fish store that is only open with the fresh fish on Fridays.
We hired a cool driver today, Alesandro, and he drove us first an hour away to Orvieto. Its a small town on the top of a cliff, that was once covered by water, then later volcanic substance. Eventually, all the water went away, and they needed a way to get to water, especially during the 2 year siege by Rome. So they built these underground caves, wells, pigeon coops (for food), and they basically created an underground city. We traversed through 2 long tunnels of caves and rooms that once held olive oil mills and fully situated cities. There are currently over 1000 caves discovered like these here, basically a hollowed out cliff that the town sits on.
On this town is even a giant, beautiful, cathedral. My guess is that in some time in the future, this entire town will collapse. The last giant erosion was in 1992.
Our second town that we drove to was Todi (no, not the soccer player Totti). We spent an hour in its town center that for the day was the flower market and gift market. My mom bought some home made acacia honey, and I lounged on the church stairs. This was a pleasant town, with what seemed to be pleasant people. We ate lunch there. I had ravioli with spinach and ricotta in a creamy sauce and of course, it was quite delicious.
We drove to a third town called Deruta–the porcelain capital of Italy. Yawn. I ate a gelato, had a coke, and milled about.
This entire day we have been chauffeured (whats the Italian word for that?) around in a Mercedes Benz mini van, toting 6 adults and the driver. We have been on extremely winding roads and I have battling car sickness. Kathy Blenkush has brought along these cool wristband type thing that has a bead in the middle of it that is supposed to apply pressure to a pressure point in your wrist that eases motion sickness. I am not sure if it helped me or not, but I am glad I didn’t go without it.
Made it back to Montalcino and had a glass of wine while working on the Internet. I needed to email our Rome apartment to let them know our approximate arrival time, as well as try to book a room for Kathy and Jeane in
Rome, as well as trying to secure ticket reservations for them to the Vatican museum with us. Talked to grandad via skype while there and he told me m a racist Italian joke (ok, I told him, but I’ll give him credit since older people can say whatever they want and get away with it).
Made it back upstairs and ate some yummy pinchi and sausage pasta my mom made, and then settled down with some wine and a game of chance (card game similar to golf card game).
It was kind of odd, being in a big city again. It kind of felt like I was in civilization again. That isn’t a good or a bad thing, it just felt like there was a large town now, and lots of people.
We followed this up with lunch near Piazza Della Signoria. This piazza is near an old fortress/palace which is now a governmental building and a museum. In this piazza are replica statues of David and many others. We had a pizza and it was one of the best yet.
We were still sore from our hike a couple of days ago, and still interested in finding a massage to work those kinks out. We asked our concierge and the best they had to offer was having the masseuses come to our room. I’ve never done that before, and it was a little weird having it in our own room, but of course once I slipped off into relax mode, I forgot all about that.
For dinner tonight, we went to the 
9 hours of travel yesterday, today we had planned what eventually became a 7 hour hike. That is right, we are officially crazy.
Our first walk was about 20 minutes of length,from Riomaggiore to Manarola on the edge of a cliff over looking gorgeous blue water. It was really pleasant. In Manarola we sampled a couple of different focacia breads. One with olives, and one plain. The walk between Manarola an Corniglia was about 45 minutes. In this town 3: Corniglia, we had to walk up 400 stairs as this town is high above the water on the cliffs.
The italian man kept turning over, eventually facing himself directly towards us. I didn’t fully trust him, and therefore unfortunately, had to keep my eye on him. He was definitely trying to show off for the ladies (or was it me), and I decided to call him the Italian Sausage.
We didn’t traverse the entire town of Vernazza, since this is the town we were sleeping in and had already explored it. However, we did stop at Il Pirata (the much famed Il Pirata-at leas the owners “the Cannoli Brothers” would tell you). Here we refreshed ourselves with some fresh granita: half strawberry, half lemon, with a touch of cream on top. Refreshing, delicious, and just what we needed before beginning our final 90-100 minute hike to town #5.
We ordered the antipasti mare which was a cold and a fried plate of seafood appetizers. There was octupus, swordfish, prawns, mussels, anchovies, fried anchovies, and many other strange looking items, most with bones or eyes still attached. All this to go along with, of course, some wine and a terriffic view.
We had a lovely time and as the rain started to go down, we walked up to the other side of town to Il Pirata and ordered 2 cannoli for take away. Took them to our rooms, ate them, and slept peacefully.
We walked a few blocks and then realized that we needed another water bus, and found our way to San Giogore church. Lisa enjoyed the beauty of this one more than the last. It is a gorgeous church with a large campinelle. It housed great works of art, and we could take pictures more freely, and explore more depths of the choirs and main basillica. We took the elevator up the campinelle for great views of Venice. As Dr. Carlander would have said, “beautiful.” Lisa must be getting at least slightly annoyed, as I keep reminicing about when I was here last, travelling with school, enjoy the friendship of Andrew. Some things that we are doing, such as visiting these 2 churches, were things that I did and enjoyed so much before.
We traversed over bridges, through alleys, across squares and then more bridges and found our way back to our room. I did some Snide prep work and we rested. Then, we went back to the itnernet cafe where I spent a frustrating 2 hours trying to publish my Snides. The attempt to upload a video to youtube kept failing, I would get typed and insert a bunch of photos and tags, and then the computer or server would freeze and when I would re-enter into the right page, I’d find that I lost 20-30 minutes of work. We kept buying 30 minute increments, and eventually I completed (all but the youtube video) of my posts up until Venice.
