For us the trip entails a 40-minute bus ride from Soriano to the Orte stazione, followed by a 45-minute train ride to Orvieto.
At the bus stop we run into one of our fellow Palazzo Catalani guests, Helen, an accountant from Scotland, and we combine forces to enjoy a very pleasant day together.
Once we arrive in Orvieto, we catch the next funicular from the stazione to the upper town.
From there we stroll upward toward the church, stopping only for a lunch that manages to combine mediocre food with soak-the-tourist prices. Oh well, it only makes us appreciate all the more the good food in Italy that we've been thoroughly enjoying.
Finally, we arrive at the Duomo, one of the most famous cathedrals in the world, boasting the most magnificent facade of any church we've seen.
After taking in the magnificent wall and ceiling frescoes on the interior, supposedly an inspiration for Michelangelo as he painted the Sistine Chapel, we walk back outside and wander a few sloping yards down to take in a slightly hazy but nonetheless magnificent view of the countryside below.
We then notice that, printed tourist information to the contrary, an English-language underground tour would be available today. We three sign up and at 4:00 p.m. are the sole customers as our charming young guide walks us down to the entrance and shows us a few of the several thousand man-made caves (more accurately cellars) that date back to the Etruscans several thousand years ago. During our tour we see ancient equipment to press olives...
and numerous man-made nests for pigeons and doves, a ready food supply for the inhabitants, especially useful if the town fell under siege.
There were successful and unsuccessful attempts to dig wells. The water table is many meters below on a base of clay. Elaborate air vents were also required. The environment during the digging of these cellars, between the darkness illuminated only by smoky oil lamps and the extremely dusty rock, would have been unimaginably terrible. Our guide invites us to check the walls and ceiling around us and it's amazing how crumbly it is. In fact, it makes us want to walk on tip-toes and whisper so not to precipitate a cave-in, of which there have been many over the centuries.
The shot below is taken looking up, and you can spot the footholds those clever Etruscans carved out of each side of the shafts, allowing them to scoot up and down. Fortunately, that isn't part of our tour.
The Etruscans were great engineers but some of their mysteries will remain hidden since excavation in the soft rock was stopped some years ago at about 1200 caves / cellars. The work itself is dangerous, and there are fears that opening up too many cells of this honeycomb, estimated to total at least 6000, could undermine the surface, including that very heavy duomo.
At a couple of points we can even peek out openings at the side of the cliff and glimpse the countryside far below.
Our guide warns us the tour includes some interesting ups and downs, but they seem fairly tame compared to our hike to the cupola of St. Peter's in Rome a few days ago.
Then it's time to walk back down the hill (we only got lost once) and catch the funicular down to the bottom as the day fades into evening.
No, that handsome fellow staring out at us below isn't the shopkeeper. He's a wild boar, a specialty of the region.
From there we hop on the train, happy to sit down for awhile as we ride back to Orte and transfer to the bus to Soriano.
Helen is pleasantly surprised to find her suitcase, missing since Saturday, has finally been delivered by her airline. We say our goodbyes and decide it's time to try some take-out pizza from what's supposedly the best pizza joint in town, Pizzeria da Gigi.
We point to several slices of pizza in the showcase. They warm them in the oven and pack them on a plastic tray inside a paper bag, which we carry back to our little apartment. The pizza is tasty and very filling. We've seen "white pizza" without any tomato sauce listed on menus here and we try some tonight. It's fun to try but we much prefer red sauce on ours. We bought some of each and even have enough left for tomorrow morning's breakfast.
And another good day in Italy comes to a close.
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