A friend from work showed me an article on this crumbling medieval city back in October when we were initially planning this trip. Realizing that it wasn't too far out of the way, we added it to the itinerary for our last day of cycling.
We got another early start today on a bright, clear beautiful morning. There was a stiff breeze blowing, but luckily it helped push us up the initial 10km hill.
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| Old distance marker on the road to Civita di Bagnoregio |
We passed through the new town (Bagnoregio) to get to the ancient one and had this view before us.
We locked up the bikes and walked down the steep steps leading to the narrow path to the city. Luckily, we had gotten there early, as apparently this is on the Asian bus tour list. We pretty much had the walkway to ourselves. This was a gorgeous little tourist trap!
After a quick cappuccino and cornetto in the main piazza to fuel up, we walked around admiring the views and all the cats! They were everywhere - here are a select few.
By the time we were ready to leave, the masses started showing up. So, we got back on the bikes and headed out into the (now) headwind. But, since the majority of the trip out was uphill (16 of 20km), the headwind wasn't so bad since we were going downhill!
We spent the remainder of the afternoon wandering around Orvieto visiting the sights and people watching.
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| Orvieto |
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| Remnants of an olive mill in a cave below town, circa 1000BC |
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| Olive oil press from the same time period |
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| A couple of locals out watching the tourists |
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| This one's for Dan! |
We are pretty bummed that this is our last day of riding. The bike touring portion of this trip has been absolutely spectacular - good scenery, good bikes, good routes and route planning, excellent hotels and B&B's and most of all fantastic people! I put trust in someone I traded a couple of emails with, halfway around the world, and Antonella Tucci of Gira l'Umbria ( http://www.giralumbria.org ) delivered in a big way!
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