Day 4 - Rome and Orvieto

Me and Faye got up early, had breakie and checked out of the hotel, then jumped on a train from Termini to Fiumicino Airport and picked up our rental car from Avis. By 11:15ish we were on teh Autostrada Roma and then north onto the big Autostrada heading in a big circle around Rome. A couple of hours and a couple turn arounds later, we made it to our first stop, a small town called Orvieto whcih is pretty much right between Rome and Florence in the Umbria region. Orvieto is a town of about the population of Iroquois Falls (the old part of Orvieto anyways), but is very unique becuase it sits on top of a huge hill and then whole city is completely walled in. We got to Orvieto around 2 and found a place to park overnight and then caught a bus into the old part of town. The hill up to the parking lot was very steep and whinedy (spl?) and gave a gorgeous view down into the valley. This view I guess was too much for Faye though, who was driving and who turns out is afraid of heights, because she had to pull over and let me drive because she couldn't handle looking down while driving.
Anyways, we parked and jumped ona bus that dropped us off in the Piazza Duomo (Piazza means square i think cause there were a bunch of 'piazzas' in Rome too). Anyways, we got up to the middle of the city and i was blown away. We were in a pretty big piazza in fron of the gigantic Duomo E Cappela Di San Brigio which is 'one of the greatest Gothic buildings in Italy'. Amazing looking church.
We had all of our baggage with us so from there we headed straight to look for a hotel called 'Posta' which was recommeded in my guidebook 'The Rough Guide to Europe', which has been great so far. We found the hotel easily enough, got a double room, then hit the streets. The town is spectacular. Exactly what you would expect from a city that is 3000 years old or so. The streets were again completely cobblestone and are wide enough for one car and one pedestrian (most of the time room for a pedestrian anyways, if not, you step into one fo the doorways carved out of the stone buildings), churches everywhere, adn just simpley an 'old' feeling that makes you really feel like that if there weren't cars, you'd have stepped back 100 years in a time warp. Tourists were everywhere when we got there, but by the time 6ish rolled around, the streets were bare of tourists and packed with locals.
So we got settled, walked abit, had a beer and i had a 'wild boar panini' (local specialty) in teh Piazza Duomo )the square with teh huge church= and then went on a tour of the underground tunnels located all over the teh city. The tour was 1 hour long and cheap (3.5 euro) and took us under the city into 3000 year old tunnels built for use as a place to grind olives in cooler temperatures adn then expanded into temples and mines. The second set of tunnels we went into had small windows built into the cliffs of the city and had hundreds of bird coops dug into the walls. Apparently they were built as pigeon coops, cause pigeons at the time were a source of food for the locals and so the people who owned the caves were very rich as a result of selling pigeon meat. The tunnels were also apparently used in the 1940s as air raid shelters during the second world war. Apparently pigeon is still a delicasy in teh area, although the only ones that i could find were live and sleeping in the holes in the walls across the street from our hotel windown. Our room had a huge (at least 6 foot high) set of windows that swing in and have small steps along the wall that let you hang your head out the window (and upper torso) in true european manner. We slept with the windows wide open and it made it feel surreal staring out the window at the thousands of year old wall across the street.
After the tour of the underground we wandered around the town stopped for the odd beers and then went out for a really nice authentic italian meal (i had vermicilli ribbon with minced hare) where we had a bunch of wine with dinner followed by sheep cheese with honey (another locally specialty), followed by expresso (basically five Canadian coffees condensed into 2.5 ounces), and then two glasses each of about 4 ounces of straight zambuka. Needless to say, i was a bit buzzed and Faye was pretty trashed (although she won't admit it). We came back and played some cards ebfore bed, during which we got sternly asked by some British dick next door to keep the noise down 'its almost 11:30 for god sakes!' (i blame it on Faye being drunk and loud).
Off to Montepulciano tomorrow. Hopefully i'll be able to find a phone or internet cafe to use cause they've been sparese.
Oh yeah, almost forgot! When we were on our way out of Termini Station in Rome, i was at an automated ticket maching trying to figure out how to get tickets to the airport when a lady with a baby (Faye thinks she had a midget, not a baby on her shoulder...i think Faye was still drunk from the night before) was trying to get me to give her money, but i told her no and then she quicly moved on to Faye who was behind me trying to read over my shoulder adn Faye gave her some change. Didn't think nothing about it till we got on teh train and noticed that her backpack where she kept her cash and everything else was unzipped and she was missing 200 Euro ($300 Canadian), but none of her cards were gone, thank god. Apparently its a well known gypsy trick to distract someone with a baby and then someone else pickpockets you; lesson learnt.