Blogging from beautiful Orvieto, September 18th, 2019!
Steps taken: 20,000
This morning, we woke up early to hit the road and leave Tarquinia for Orvieto. Since the purpose of this blog is to give you (the readers) an idea of what our experience on this FSP is like, our blog would not be complete without a full description of the BUS! Here’s what we saw when we looked around, 20 minutes into the trip:
- Ben and Mila were listening to music
- Margaret was zonked out
- Mack couldn’t fall asleep
- Kylie could fall asleep, but barely
- Leo also fell asleep
- Professor Stewart read some complicated Classics articles
- Shawn chatted with Professor Stewart, and also listened to music
- Alex stared out the window while listening to music
After a refreshing morning walk with plenty of switchbacks (a new vocabulary word for Halle), we arrived at a cemetery that was unfortunately, closed. Mack highlights his disappointment in the below selfie:
A little bit disappointed, but not discouraged, we took the bus to the Temple of Belvedere. It was incredible to use our phones to measure the temple’s proportions to find that it was a perfect Vitruvian temple. This may not sound like a big deal for you, dear reader, but this is a HUGE deal. Colossal. After a long search for the perfect Vitruvian temple, we finally found it.
After we recovered from our excitement vomits, we took a few to settle in at our hotel and had DELICIOUS PORCHETTA sandwiches for lunch. On 8/10 bread! The crowd was pleased.
After lunch, we walked to two museums and saw some very cool bucchero and vases, finds from the Temple of Belvedere we had explored earlier. Then, we went to the National Archaeological museum, where we saw a second round of grave goods from the local Necropolis, which we explored afterwards. At the Necropolis, we tried to read and translate Etruscan, while also making friends with a French tour group.
At night, we had a VERY long Italian meal at a restaurant with an Etruscan grotto in its basement, and explored a little bit more of Orvieto.