Orvieto and Tuscany

Today is our first full day in Italy. We leave our hotel in Rome around 8:30 and head north to the hilltop city of Orvieto. The city has been around since before the Romans annexed it in the 3rd century BC. It's a pretty remarkable place and we use the funicular (a hillside cable car), to get to the top of the old city. 

A stroll through the narrow streets shows us this is a popular place, not only for the tourists, but also for the locals with the day off for Easter Monday. Dozens of small shops and restaurants line the streets and our walk takes us to the Orvieto Cathedral whose cornerstone was laid by Pope Nicholas IV in 1290. 

Lunch was at a small and quiet shop where we enjoyed shared plates of local meats, cheeses and a selection of bruschetta, which is far different from what we are accustomed to back home. 

The views from this hilltop city are pretty spectacular and well worth our self guided walk around the city's perimeter. 

A sample of some of the more residential streets.

It's back on the bus by 2:30 for the trip to our hotel, hidden in the hills of the Tuscany region. 

We arrive at what will be our home for the next four nights, around 4:30 and just love the view from our room's balcony. 

The day is capped off with a dinner on the outskirts of Florence, that was both delicious and very entertaining. Our table turned out to be the Canadian contingent, just by chance. A great group of people who were willing to go along with the antics of Salvatore, the restaurants owner. There was typical Italian music played on the accordion with vocals provided by a wonderful local tenor.

The wine flowed freely and I won't go into great detail here, but thank the Good Lord my brother doesn't keep a blog or a Facebook page where he could post the pictures he took of me dancing with Salvatore. That's all I'm sayin'....  buonanotte .