An Oriveto Weekend!

This weekend we took an overnight trip to the lovely hill town of Orvieto. It was nice to get out of the busy crowded city and to a place where they actually had things like trees and grass! It was only about an hour train ride. I'll have to use the assistance of Google Images to show you the town as there wasn't a very good view from the train:
It is in a beautiful location and is pretty much the quintessential little Italian town and I loved it! Definitely more pleasant than Rome or Florence--a lot calmer and quieter. The hill was surrounded by hiking areas and I guess there is a place down by the river where you can rent canoes, but we just were up in the town the whole time--it would have been cool to have stayed longer to explore the surrounding area a bit.

Arriving at town, heading to our hotel (four stars: yesss!).
I shared a really nice room with Sheida and C'havala, and we had a lovely white marble bathroom, super soft beds and a flowery terrace looking out onto the street. But most importantly: AIR CONDITIONING!! Hooray! Their breakfast was also delicious and had all sorts of free tasty pastries.

After checking in everyone went around and explored the city

We basically spent a day and a half wandering around the town. It was pretty small, and you could easily walk across the whole thing in less than an hour. We never were bored, though; there were all kinds of cool shops and places to explore. But mostly: the city wall! Orvieto is up on a big hill and the whole city is fortified with this gigantic stone and brick wall. You can walk around the whole city on this wall and there are great views all around.



There were a few really nice parks around the edges of the city. Some of them had playgrounds...with SWINGS!! Yay!

Boar heads adorned the entire town, pretty much! Usually they were outside pubs or deli shops.

Some of the shops had rather....interesting..souvenirs. One store had a bunch of these spiked ball weapon things, of all sizes... and they were not just little plastic toys, either...you could definitely kill someone with one of these guys. This shop also had crossbows. So, I guess if you ever want some medieval weaponry, head over to Orvieto!

Ruins of an ancient Etruscan templeOn Friday afternoon, Lisa gave us a tour of Orvieto's duomo, the giant church. It was so vast and ornate...very out of place in the rest of the town, I thought, but still pretty awesome! Both the exterior (except the facade) and the interior were made of stacked black and white stones to create alternating stripes.

Inside, windows made of stone cut very, very thinly let in a warm, amber-colored light that reflected beautifully off the floor

After that, we wandered around some more and then Lisa and Mona took us all out to dinner. It was delicious as usual. Most of us have been eating rather frugal dinners as the program has progressed (ie, pasta with red sauce or pesto most nights) so we all enjoy these fancy group dinners every once in a while!

Before we left the next day, Lisa took us down St. Patrick's Well. It is basically a very deep, very dark hole with two narrow spiral staircases (one for going up and one for going down) that wrap around it. This was so that people bringing mules down to fetch their water would not crash into each other, because it was so narrow! The steps were made of stone and were rather slippery, and even with the flickering lights they had installed it was pretty dark. It got cooler and cooler the further we went down, and the air was kind of musty and old and hard to breathe, but it was worth it to be away from the sun for a bit. At the bottom, we all tossed in a couple coins down into the green-blue water, made some wishes, and started the long hike back up.

This is the view looking up from the bottom...it was a long way down there!

After a quick stop at the flea market and the purchase of some sandwiches, we took the red tram back down and caught a train back to Rome for our last week of classes!