Orvieto, not just the wine

Italy’s central landscape has caught us by surprise. We’ve never imagined it would be this beautiful.

The Apeninos mountain run from the Alps all the way along the east coast through the middle of the country. It feels like the country is sitting on the top of a hill. Hills seem to be the favourite places for Italians to build their villages. They are known as hilltop towns. They are cute and beautiful.

Hilltop towns have many things in common: built on a top of a hill; very inconvenient especially for old people to walk around; buildings hardly renovated, it seems that tourists really like this look; quintessentially Italian; sumptuous churches; always a cathedral…But they all have something that makes them unique.

The next one we stop after Perugia: Orvieto. We must admit that we have chosen this because it has the name of one of our favourite Italian white wines. We are that superficial at times . Our guide also recommended it, so we were quite pleased we didn’t make a bad choice at the end of the day.

After Perugia, we drove to an aire at Ficulle, a little tiny village with a free aire. We got to the aire at 16.30, unusually early for us. A shame, being so early would have given us more than enough time to write posts and update the blog, but unfortunately we couldn’t do anything. The weather was miserable yesterday. The lack of sun and a short drive from Pergugia to Ficulle were the perfect excuses for Dora not to generate any electricity. So, we better save the little she has made for dinner. Didn’t fancy cooking and eating in the dark.

So we read our books and we played Parchis, a Spanish version of Ludo. We have a couple of them in Guisando but we forgot to bring one. We have been unsuccessfully looking for one in Italy. Even Chinese places don’t know what it is! so we downloaded an App on the iPad, which is good as now we are getting some use out of it. The only other thing we seem to use it for is writing Trip Advisor reviews, which we have recently started and you can find here; LINK

We are really addicted to this game now. See how long it will last!

There is a problem with this, Susana is a really bad loser, so we can spend the evening in silence if she does not win. The worse is when she gets beaten by the computer, you might just as well go straight to bed. GDR

The next day is still rainy and drizzly. We have only fifteen kilometres drive to Orvieto, we hope it gets clear when we get there.

The vineyards landscape starts to reveal itself. We haven’t arranged any wine tours in Orvieto. Surprisingly, we are not into wine tours in Italy yet. We did some research the other day. It looks like that you need to book the wine tours in advanced, preferably online. It seems that Italians wine farms are fairly small, similar to French, therefore, they are not open to the public at all times. The language barrier coupled with the difficulty of having internet access 24/7 have been putting us off trying to book anything.

Olive trees seem to inundate the Italian countryside around this area rather than vineyards. This could upset some of my country fellows but I must admit that Italians make pretty good quality Italian olive oils. Olive oil mixed with balsamic vinegar on top of a nice ciabatta bread, one of our favourite starters.

Orvieto doesn’t offer many parking facilities to motorhomes, it must be very touristic. The only proper car park for her, an aire which you have to pay for. This aire also has other facilities such as water disposals and electricity. For the former, we are fine. For the latter, we could do with topping up Dora’s electricity reserves so we are able to recharge all our IT equipment. €2.00, that would do.

A cable car runs from the bottom of the car park to the top of the town. After experiencing the minimetro yesterday in Perugia, this cable car does not do  anything for us other than the time we save rather than walking up the hill.

Very empty. It doesn’t seem a commonly used public transport for residents, unlike the minimetro in Perugia. It must be only for tourists.

Once we get to the town we do the usuals, walking up the main street, looking for a tourist information office to tell us the ‘must see’ places.

We cannot find one. But it is pretty easy to get to the main sites in a town like this. In fact, this is what primarily this town is about: sightseeing. The signs to all monuments are very clear.

The cathedral of Orvieto, a stripy one like the one in Siena.

Very impressive. I suppose this is the effect they want to achieve on people by building such enormous, imposing buildings. Again that amazing bit of deception, making the front so much bigger than the rear. GDR

The scale of it in comparison with the scale of the town…I wonder why a building like this was built in a small village like Orvieto. Apparently the construction of such a large church was supported by the magistrates of the town who wanted to provide Orvieto with a cathedral which could compete with that of Siena, the arch-rival town, was in the process of completing. It sounds like the purpose of these grandiose buildings was not so much about adoring god but more about gaining political and economic power.

There it is. The entrance, inspiring? It certainly intimidates.

They really went for it when they used stripes in a building like this. I have not come across this feature in any other building of this time (except in Siena). I like them. A simple but elegant concept to decorate a place. No need to add the usual frescos; marble sculptures; or renaissance paintings which you would normally find in most churches. Very pleasant to see a different style.

Nonetheless they wished to add a bit of colour using the glass windows. A very churchy technique. Although I hadn’t seen the faded brown tones at the bottom of the window before. Shame that from here, we cannot see how it has been done or what materials have been used. The effect is beautiful.

This is actually a marble or onyx which has been cut really thin so that it lets the light through. They have now developed techniques where you can laminate stone to glass and then cut it down to only 3 of 4mm thick, so you can pretty much allow any stone let light through it. I have been trying to use this on my projects for many years, but have yet to succeed! GDR

Not allowed to go any further unless you are willing to pray. We could have pretended we would, simply to visit the room, but we are not that hypocritical.

We walk back to the cable car, it has started to rain again. At least we have left Dora hooked up to an electricity source. She won’t let us down tonight.

On the way back, a few food delicatessen shops selling pasta, bread and olive oil, very sophisticatedly presented so they can charge 20% extra for it.

We have not seen much promotion of Orvieto wine. Only a couple of shops had a few bottles on display priced at around €15, but no announcement of vineyards or wine tours. Bit disappointing.

However, the usual tourist crap is present everywhere.

We leave Orvieto but not before we stop in Lidl to get a few bits for tonight and, hopefully, a more sensible priced bottle of Orvieto. Surprisingly they don’t have much choice, only one type, so we get one.  Maybe Orvieto wine is popular only in the UK. Italians drink other type of white wines, probably better. We should keep an eye of what the locals drink.

We now drive towards the eastern part of Umbria. The plan: a two days trek along hilltop towns. Again, this walk has been categorised in our trekking book as one of the best walks in Western Europe.

We have chosen to sleep in Foligno, in an aire close to the train station, quite convenient to get the train to Assisi where we will start the walk tomorrow.

I am navigating. I have looked at the AutoRoute map on the computer. I know exactly where to go. Don’t need to look at the map again.

That is what I thought. The town seems bigger than anticipated, a series of one-way streets disorientate me, we also have hit rush hour. The result, I have no clue where I am. My directions to Gary are vague and late. He is getting frustrating, I am getting stressed.

I ask him to take over. He stops. Suddenly a long queue of angry Italian drivers tooting at us. They can’t go around us. Dora is too big.

Gary eventually takes us to the aire. Free, with none of the facilities described in our motorhome book, i.e. water, chemical disposals, etc.

Gary, much more chilled out than me, gives me a hug. I need it. We leave Dora and go out to town for a glass of wine. I need that too.

We get back to Dora, he cooks nice mushroom risotto with an okay Lidl glass of Orvieto. Nice end of the day.

SM