Spent the morning following a city walking tour outlined in my route guide. It took me from church to church where it raved about the architecture and the frescos. On doing it I found it also took me through the old 13th century part of town full of towers and palazzos plus a bit of ancient Etruscan wall. Fortunately the city has put up signs outside the buildings they consider significant in English as well as Italian. These detailed when and how they were built and who lived in them so it was a nice stroll. In many of these buildings as elsewhere, the ground floor was typically used as a shop and the higher floors were for living in. One feature I have not seen elsewhere is that the stairs to the higher floor are outside and lead to a landing. Apparently this is so there is more space downstairs and only a single, easily defended point of entry to the living areas.
On the stroll I passed a shop selling sportswear and ducked in to buy some gym shoes as my feet were not happy strolling in the shoes I had. I ended up walking out in a comfy new pair of purple leather trainers. Only in Italy would they come in such colours. In Oz they would be black or white, perhaps will the odd colourful swoosh. I adore them.
For lunch I stopped at some random place and had the fixed price lunch menu. It turned out to be used by lots of businessmen on their lunch break, so definitely for locals. To start I had orecchiette with a speck and rucola (and cream) sauce. Main turned out to be a hockey puck of local cheese wrapped in more speck and then baked. Ordering the thing you don't recognise can sometimes not turn out as well as you might hope. At least I got to dress my side salad myself this time. I'm so not going to test my cholesterol levels for at least a year when I get home.
In the afternoon I went to the Etruscan museum. There were many Etruscan towns in this area, including here, so there were 3 floors of things to look at. It included large aerial photos of the various towns (many now abandoned) as well as recreations of several buildings. Just fascinating, but only got a passing mention in my route notes as it wasn't a church and didn't have frescoes. After all this culture I had my siesta (also a very cultured thing to do).
I had dinner at a restaurant that specialised in Sardinian dishes. I figure I will get plenty of Lazio cooking over the next week. Again I picked things at random because I while I speak Italian-food I don't speak Sardinian of any description. My primo turned out to be small ears of pasta with a cheese and ragu sauce. Main was roast pork (moist and tasty but without any kind of seasoning so not as good as last night) and a side of chicory. The side was horrible as it had a slight fishy flavour. They must have put something in the cooking water. An interesting experiment. I had no room for dessert so I just had another coffee (my 3rd for the day and then I wondered why I had trouble sleeping) and then home to bed.
I found out what the issue was about the arsenic. Apparently it has been discovered that several of the natural water sources for the area have almost double the permissible amount of arsenic in them. The response of the relevant government minister was to say a little arsenic never hurt anyone and then he tried to get the EU to double the safe amount so he wouldn't have to do anything about it. As you can imagine it caused a bit of a fuss.
Love the sound of your purple shoes - but don't wear them in the rain. Italian shoes (in my experience) tend to be high on fashion, low on durability!
ReplyDeleteViterbo looks lovely. I've got some chicory growing in the Roman garden which you can try when you get home.
And Victorians (era not locality) used to eat arsenic to improve their complexions I think. Small quantities of course. And wasn't that what killed Phar Lap?