Monthly Archives: October 2014

We spent the day in the Pompeii ruins until around 3pm and then left for the long drive to Rome’s Fiumicino airport.  In the town adjacent to the airport, the lovely Letterario B&B was convenient for an early flight and we had a great dinner at near-by La Locanda restaurant.

Pompeii was amazing, intriguing and vast.  You really got the feeling of a snap-shot view of early Roman history, with the crowds of visitors adding to the sense of a bustling and prosperous community.

We spent Thursday morning of 16-Oct exploring the museum & the Necropoli del Calvario tombs of Tarquinia Italy. That afternoon we drove to Pompei and checked into the Diana Inn for one night.  John had misjudged the distance from Tarquinia to Pompei (maybe 200 miles) so the drive was long, but worth the time.

The Tarquinia archaeological museum was very interesting, packed with Etruscan, Roman and modern era artifacts.  We left to explore the tombs at the Necropoli del Calvario which were equally interesting.  The setting is a hilltop east of the town center.  The tombs date from around 500 bce and were rediscovered in the early 1900’s.  The Necropoli covers several acres with each tomb accessible through a steep stairway descending about 15 feet leading to a door with a glass window and an interior light which illuminated the tomb walls.  Most tombs were one room but some had doorways from the main room leading to other rooms.  All the tombs had beautifully painted walls & ceilings which were remarkably preserved given the age.

Tarquinia Italy. Our B&B was in the center building.

We got into Pompei that evening after a 3-hour drive, mostly on a toll road at about 80mph.  We walked to the square in front of the cathedral then had a great diner at a restaurant nearby the Diana Inn.

On Wednesday 15-Oct we checked out of the Agriturismo Il Melograno B&B in Pianello and drove south. Our first destination was Orvieto, a place John fondly remembered for its unique setting and beautiful cathedral. Ultimately we were heading for  on Italy’s west coast, site of a UNESCO world heritage necropolis with BC tomb paintings.  (Tarquinia is about a two hour, 100 mile drive south of Piombino & Polulonia where we had been working the week before.)

While driving late the night before, we had encountered a small medieval fortress in San Gregorio near to Pianello so we visited there first. The road-side castle, Piazza e porta di San Gregorio, had the look & feel of a whole citadel but the back walls have fallen. With few signs and no one around, we were left to imagine what its history was. It could easily have been a movie set, but it had apartments for rent.

To get to Orvieto from the main North-South motorway we chose to head east on small roads over a steep ridge of maintains and through a national forest instead of veering south then north on the main roads.  It was beautiful country & we encountered two large deer with moose-like antlers along the roadside.

We toured Orvieto’s cathedral and museum, had a delicious lunch (John thought it was the best lasagna he’d ever had) and then drove on to Tarquinia.  Arriving in Tarquinia in late afternoon, we found ourselves driving within the castle’s walls on a maze of streets barely wide enough to fit the car while looking for a likely B&B.

Jessie fired up her iPad and found a recommended B&B – the Palazzo Rosati – that was near-by and we settled in there for the night.

Piazza e porta di San Gregorio, near Pianello Italy

Orvieto’s main square

Tarquinia, Italy

On Tuesday 14-Oct under a threateningly overcast sky we drove out of the driveway of Agriturismo il Melograno in Pianello and turned left.  We didn’t know the area and thought vaguely that we’d head to Assisi nearby, but decided to see where this road we were on would lead.

(Ed: The thing about using GPS to navigate strange lands is that you don’t get a sense of place, of where other interesting places are in relation to you.  I wanted to just see some of this area without direction.  The Garmin Nuvi GPS model we had, with a 2014 Europe NT chip installed, worked well for the most part, but did feed us some consequential misdirection at times.  In directing us to a B&B, GPS had us driving on a single track farm road leading into a old olive orchard high on a hillside. [B&B said happens often.] And without a ‘city center’ choice just to get you in the area [ie Peruga, Siena] you’re forced to choose a likely address, sometimes sending you way off.)

Assisi at night

Assisi entry gate at night

Assisi fortress at night

The road led us through a range of steep hills northeast to Gubbio, an ancient hill-side town in Umbria.  We got there around noon and found it to be charming and off the beaten tourist track.  We wandered the town for awhile dodging rain showers and found the main square in front of one of the earliest public buildings in Italy, Palazzo dei Consoli.  From Wikipedia: Gubbio was “made famous for the discovery there of the Eugubine (or Iguvine) Tables, a set of bronze tablets that together constitute the largest surviving text in ancient Umbrian. After the Roman conquest in the 2nd century BC — it kept its name as Iguvium — the city remained important, as attested by its Roman theatre, the second-largest surviving in the world.”

We had lunch on the plaza in the hotel surrounded by movie posters of spaghetti western stars.  We then visited the museum and saw an eclectic mix of artifacts and the featured Eugubine Tables themselves.

As it was getting late in the day and we still wanted to see Assisi, we skipped a visit to the Roman theater and got on the road. We arrived at Assisi as the sun was setting and drove into and around the hilltop citadel in darkness.  Jessie stopped in to buy some wine and we both stayed in the shop for some time getting served samples of cheese and wine.  Both were great and we bought some of almost everything we tried.  We still have some of the Pecorino Subasio left, but not for long.

Palazzo dei Consoli, Gubbio Italy

On Monday 13-Oct we left Monteriggioni and headed south east for Perugia.  Jessie looked up B&Bs as we neared Perugia and we settled on Agriturismo Il Melograno B&B in Pianello.  It was a nicely furnished inn surrounded by olive tree groves, not much hint of a farm except for the display of old equipment, on a hilltop with an extensive view of the nearby valleys.

On the drive we stopped briefly in Terme at a natural hot springs spa, but we were not intrigued enough to pay the daily rate (and purchase of a robe) to take the plunge.  Maybe next time.

After getting settled, we drove into Perugia’s business district where we wandered around and had diner. We never found the escalator that goes to the actual old town on top.

View from the pool at Agriturismo il Melograno, Pianello (near Perugia)

In Perugia

On Sunday morning 12-Oct we were enjoying cheese & wine in the garden patio at the B&B in Monteriggioni when we heard a drumming coming from the fortress’s main square.  We investigated and found a colorful church procession including medieval outfits and a drum corp.

After watching the specticle & sermons for awhile, Jessie & I headed to the city of Siena.  We parked near the city center and walked into the vast Piazza del Campo where we had lunch and people watched.  The town was crowded with tourists.

We then walked to the beautiful Basilica di San Francesco, paid for the basic access and thoroughly appreciated the cathedral’s vast interior.  The floors were particularly beautiful and some were playfully 3-dimensional.

We got back to Monteriggioni and were greeted by a large band concert in the main square.  Somewhere along the way we visited the museum in the visitors center which allowed John to try on a coat & hood of steel mail (armor) — it was very heavy — along with other armor & hoist a sword.

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Our work and project at the Earthwatch site drew to a close today, Friday 10-Oct.  We bid goodby to our fellow workers & to the staff.  We picked up an Avis rental car in Piombino and headed towards Volterra.

We checked into Hotel Villa Porta All’ Arco, down-slope from central Volterra.  Most locals would consider it a short walk up about 200 steps to the town center, but we preferred to drive and park nearby.  We walked around the town and went into the museum of archeology, a large collection of early Etruscan, Roman and later artifacts.  They had discovered a large necropolis of tombs from the pre-Roman eras so there were a lot of them on display.

Our home in Populonia Stazione, Italy