Who gets the cheese?
Wednesday, September 25
Orvieto and eating our way through Umbria
Once again we headed out for Termini by means of the Metro, this time booked on an inter-city train, with all coaches in the same class and no reserved seats. Once again we enjoyed the ride, and with a slightly later departure time, the sun was up and we got to check out the countryside the whole ride. I’ve talked about Jan Cordell and Earth Journeys Travel, and we are all indebted to her for making arrangements for this trip. However, this particular day was arranged for us by David Tordi of Orvieto Viva, and what a day it was! David worked with TeseoTur, a firm that specializes in agricultural tourism, to provide us with a unique program for the day, managing somehow to fit everything we asked for into an eight-hour stay in Umbria.
We got to the Orvieto train station on time and were met by Elisabetta Martelli, our personal guide and companion for the day. We didn’t realize how lucky we were at first, but her enthusiasm and friendly personality made the day even more enjoyable. No wonder she’s at the head of the list of tour guides on Orvieto Online. We took the funicular almost straight up to the old city, and then hopped on the local tour bus for a short ride to the Cathedral. Judy and I had been to Orvieto once before, but the sight of the Cathedral façade, with its mosaics and beautiful stonework, was a new one for KC, Tori, and Mark. On the Orvieto Photo Page, you’ll see many photographs of the Cathedral facade. It’s a beautiful thing to look at, and I don’t know of another one that attracts me like this one does. I could look at it all day.
We had a few minutes to check things out around the piazza before we joined a small group for a tour of the Orvieto Caves. This was a new experience for all of us! We walked through two caves, each one used originally for a different purpose. Seeing stone grinding wheels for olive oil production wasn’t new to me, but using caves as dove cotes for raising pigeons for food surprised me. I don’t recall cave tours being advertised so much on our earlier trip to Orvieto, but I highly recommend it to anyone who visits the city.
We then went through the Duomo, the Cathedral of Saint Mary of the Assumption, with time to spend in both the major chapels in the transepts. Unfortunately we were not allowed to take photographs, so the frescoes started by Fra Angelico and completed by Luca Signorelli, the Corporal Chapel, and a really impressive marble Pietà are beautiful elements of the interior that I can’t show you on this page. Or on the Orvieto photo page, but you’ll see plenty of other beautiful photos there.
When we left the Duomo, we walked through just a few of the narrow streets while Elisabetta pointed out some shops she thought we might be interested in. Then it was time to eat, and did we ever eat! The entire meal was arranged for us, so all we had to do was sit down and wait for one course after another to be brought to our table. Just to give you an idea of what we enjoyed read this list of starters and look at them in the photo: Maurizio’s Grande Antipasto with bruschettas, Umbrian salame, capocollo, prosciutto, cheese, fried specialties. That would be enough, but we also got six or seven additional special dishes, followed by some of the best lasagna I’ve ever tasted, a salad, homemade desserts, and coffee, all accompanied by local wines, both white and red.
We waddled out of the restaurant, and while Judy, Tori and KC shopped, Mark and I struck out for the church of San Andrea, a real contrast to the Duomo in its simplicity. Then it was a run to get back to the piazza to meet Elisabetta and Simone, our driver for the afternoon, so we could pile into a van for our afternoon in the countryside of Umbria.
The drive itself was a lot of fun because we went so far off the beaten path. Looking at the countryside while driving on the highways in the past, and then looking through train windows and down from the height of Orvieto to the Umbrian countryside, I had been struck with how neat everything was. That changed the further we got from Orvieto, and by the time we were riding along a small dirt road I felt like I was back home in Possum Bend. When we actually reached the farm where the cheese was made, it was like visiting the Cook Hill of my childhood. The outbuildings looked so much like the ones I grew up with it didn’t surprise me at all to see an old bathtub being used to provide water for the sheep.
We got an introduction to the traditional way of making Pecorino from sheep’s milk, we met the flock, we visited the room used to age the cheese, and then we had a real treat. We sat around a table under the trees, enjoying a taste of several different cheeses produced there, accompanied by home-made bread, homemade fig and almond jam, and homemade tapenade. Please remember that this was only an hour or so after what must have been the largest mid-day meal I’ve ever eaten. We were lucky people. And perhaps a little over-fed, too, but the day wasn’t over yet. Not by a long shot.
Back in the van, we had another fun drive to the Bartolomei olive mill and museum. The tour of the small museum was good, and I was glad to learn a little about the history of olive oil in general and of the Bartolomei family’s work in particular. After the tour took us into the area where the modern machinery carries out the work once done by traditional grinding stones, we were again treated to a small feast. This time it was presented as an opportunity to taste and compare different olive oils, but the amount of bread and accompaniments meant that for me, at least, this was another meal. And a very good one it was, though only an hour after our cheese-tasting feast. Before we loaded into the van, we did manage a stop at the shop, just to ward off starvation. And maybe take a little of this local product home with us.
Finally the day ended with a ride back to the train station in Orvieto, a long wait for a delayed train, and another Metro journey from Termini to the hotel. This time, there was no need to find a place for dinner; we just had to prepare to leave Rome the next day on our flight to Nice.