orvieto, italy

We decided on walking from our hotel in Siena to the train station instead of taking the bus. We got there half an hour early for the train we intended to take, but it turned out that train didn't run at that time anymore, and we had JUST missed the one that ran instead.. we actually saw it pulling away.. if only we had taken the bus! It was seriously only a matter of being there one minute earlier. Instead we had to wait like an hour and a half until the next chance we could get to Chiusi (connection on the way to Orvieto), and it wasn't even by train, it was by bus. Once we got to Chiusi we learned that the train we wanted to Orvieto, was delayed an hour and 20 minutes. Yay!

We finally got to Orvieto and took the funicular up to town (Orvieto sits atop this big hill). Only one of our guidebooks covered Orvieto, and even then there was only a tiny paragraph about it. Luckily it did list a cheap place to stay though, and we found it easily because Orvieto is pretty small! The hotel was kind of rickety, but our room finally had a heater that worked! We spent the afternoon walking all around..the weather was great, and we had some good views of the other towns down below. All we had been eating lately was pizza and we felt like a more hearty meal so we went and found a decent place. It was ok.. but just kind of plain. We've been staying in cheap hotels lately instead of hostels so we haven't had a kitchen to cook our own meals in a while which we miss! We also toured the.. wait for it.. cathedral! heheh.. it was another really nice one and probably the biggest building in town. Orvieto was really cute, with endless twisty turny streets and little stone houses. We stayed two nights, and on our second day we took a day trip to the nearby hill town of Civita di Bagnoregio.