A Day in the Country, Part 1: Orvieto

Last week three dear friends from college came to town, and we were fortunate to spend several days in their company. We've been friends with Iggy, Maggie and Anandamayi for years, but haven't seen them since 2009, or as it's affectionately called in our circle, The Year of Many Weddings (including our own). We met them for dinner a couple nights while they were in town, and we went on a day trip together to Orvieto last weekend.

I didn't really know anything about Orvieto when we set out, except that it's in Umbria, and reportedly beautiful. It's an easy trip from Rome by train - about an hour and ten minutes. It was also Indigo's first train ride, and she was excited to be on a "choo-choo". We ate bread and excellent cheese and salami on the ride, and very soon we were there.

At first I was confused - where was the town? And then my friends told me that we had to take a funicular up the mountainside, because Orvieto was essentially about 52 stories up. I'd never been on a funicular before (it's essentially a tram with two cars that counterbalance one another; while one goes up, the other comes down), and was a little worried about how Indigo would react to the ride, but she was fine.

And then - we were in the town. We decided to first explore the Etruscan ruins. Indigo had a blast running around, and managed to find the one muddy puddle in the whole city - and jumped in. Of course. The view of the countryside from the ruins was breathtaking.

We then walked down the street into the city proper, and it was just gorgeous. I fell in love immediately. It really reminded me of Mont Saint-Michel in Normandy, France, in feel. It was yet another isolated city/fortress built atop a bunch of rocks - Orvieto isn't an island, of course, but it is on top of a mountain, so the feel is very similar. And it has similar narrow, curving streets and tiny shops filled with both artisanal wares and tourist kitsch.

We walked through the town, meandering slowly towards the Duomo, which was "striped" with different colors of stone (I'm told this style is famous in Siena, but there's also a church in Florence that uses the same technique). On the steps of the cathedral, Indigo befriended a small Italian boy, and the two of them ran around together for a while, until I finally coaxed her away with the promise of gelato. Which was quite tasty.

The piazza that surrounds the cathedral is quite large, and happily (mostly) car-free, so Indigo was free to run around quite a bit. Most of the small, winding roads were car-free, actually, so it's a great town for little kids. I could let her run without worrying too much, except when she spied a ceramics store (of which there were many), and then we were in trouble! She kept saying that she wanted "a teapot", and would head into the store to try to grab the first pitcher or bowl that she saw. She gave us a few heart attacks.

After a quick dinner it was sadly, time to leave. I am actually happy that we didn't see everything that we had wanted to, because it means that we have a good excuse to take a trip back to the town some time.  Maybe around Christmastime, or in the Spring.