An hours drive south of our accommodation is the hilltop city of Orvieto. Having just visited busy Florence this is an easy bustle free place with far fewer tacky souvenir shops and a very impressive duomo.
Unlike Florence the impressive part of the duomo is concentrated on the outside. The front of this duomo is covered in ornate mosaic & sculpture to match that of Florence but is much more accessible. You can get up close and take the time to appreciate the fantastic craftsmanship without being jostled.
The rest of the city is fairly compact with some good looking art & sculpture. It’s a good thing we can’t fit anything into the MX-5 or we would break the budget here. Not that we could fit the MX-5 down some of these roads either but somehow people do, or judging by the scrapes on the walls sometimes don’t.
Lunch is in a wine shop which doubles up as a cafe so you can sample a superb Panini or cake (or both like we did) over a tipple. Wine prices vary massively here from 4 to 30 EUR per bottle but our palette is more attuned to beer than wine. That’s available too of course but it’s a long drive back so abstinence is in order.
It’s Beck’s birthday tomorrow so we take a minor detour to check out a possible spot at Trasimeno lake for a birthday picnic. It’s a good thing we did as the water is turgid, there’s lots of nipping flies, there’s a dead fish floating by the dock. Not somewhere we want to spend the day especially as we are going to the pristine island of Elba soon.
To assist in deciding on what to do next we have some of the best food of the trip so far at Il Goccino, a superb restaurant we have been eyeing up in Lucignano.
We hatch a new plan and action it immediately after present opening & cornetti eating. Bagno Vingnoni is a hamlet about an hours drive away through the beautiful Tuscan hills. After a few ‘helpful’ diversions by the GPS we easily find the parking and take a stroll into the central square. The thing is, it’s not a central square as normal, it’s a huge hot spring, surrounded by little shops and cafes.
You can’t use the central pool, presumably because it would put off the resident artists who are taking a painting lesson or detract from the impressive sculptures dotted around the pool side. There is however a free natural pool fed from here to cool off in which we duly do and cover ourselves in the mud, surely highly beautifying?
Thankfully there are several benches here as we have brought a picnic to enjoy under the wild fig trees. It’s a great spot & a welcome change from visiting cities.
Another interesting side trip on the way back takes us to La Foce for a tour around an English-Italian garden. The tour is as much about the garden as about the history of the site and the owners, Iris & Antonio Origo, who bought & transformed it and much of the valley in the 1930’s, supporting 57 farmsteads, and the impact of the 2nd world war on the area. It’s a beautiful site but the story behind it is just as interesting.