Over the last 24 hours I have gone to work, driven 10 hours to Florida, slept a bit, driven to the airport, flown to Charlotte NC, and now I am currently writing this from our flight to Rome.
I have always strive to be fairly smart when it comes to money. And when it comes to traveling, I often times will weigh the difference of driving to flying before deciding which I would rather do. And after my 9 day road trip in June, I wouldn’t have planned on doing any long distance solo driving any time again soon. However, the universe has it’s own plans. When we started planning this trip to Italy, I was trying to find affordable flight to Florida from Gulfport. Unfortunately, everything was coming up as more expensive than I wanted, and would only fly me within an hour or two of Laura’s house, meaning I’d still need a rental to get me to her house for the night, and ya back to catch our flight in the morning. So as the struggle to find a flight continued, I decided to look at car rentals instead. When the price ended up being about $200 cheaper than a flight, driving the 10 hours to Florida started to sound a lot more doable. Now that it’s over, it doesn’t seem so bad, but even when you’re not sleepy and driving, being on the same road for 500 miles and then another road for 400 more gets boring. Luckily for me, I have a handful of people who were willing to chat with me on the phone to help me stay focused.
I arrived at Laura’s without ceremony (minus one giant rock causing a tiny chip in my rental windshield). Walked in with a hug and my suitcase, and pretty much went straight to bed. After getting about 5 hours of sleep, we both woke up and started getting a bit of last minute work and packing done before getting in the car (again) to head to the airport. With a Spotify Queue of music up and running, we were off, spending the morning drive catching up on the past couple of months since we’d seen each other. After dropping of the rental (praise be I didn’t have to pay for the windshield chip) our flight from Florida to Charlotte was fairly uneventful, just a few announcements about Hurricane Dorian and all flights of our continuing on time.
Leaving for Rome had a bit more excitement to it, due to the whole international flight thing. Luckily, we had been able to choose our seats ahead of time, so we did not have to worry about a “first come, first serve” sort of situation. Once seated, one of the first things we investigated was the tablet set up and started scrolling through available movies and other in-flight entertainment. Only to have a slight moment of panic when I realized my headphone jack for the planes system was broken. More praises be, the woman sitting behind us has no seat partner and she was willing to trade us rows, since the jack next to her worked just fine. Thank goodness for nice people and perfect seat placement. 9 hours on a place would have been very long without having been able to watch a couple movies and play some games on my phone.
Unfortunately Laura and I were both hit with insomnia, and were not able to get any solid amount of sleep during our flights. We were determined to hit the ground running and make it to our first destination of Orvieto before taking a break. After a few tram and train switches, one ride in a Funicular, and a walk up a hill, we made it to the Air B&B to drop our luggage and find lunch. Laura had researched in advance and picked out a few recommended places to eat during our time in Orvieto, so we stopped by one right up the road. We were able to choose from a variety of prepared dishes that were all place upon one plate, and we each tried a glass of locally produced wine (one of which I will talk more about in my day two post). After this meal, we walked around the city on the hill, checking out the gold filigreed Duomo di Orvieta, the two clock towers, wandering down narrow streets and ornamented alleys along the way.
Our first guided tour in Orvieto was of the underground cave systems buried beneath the city. This labyrinth of grottoes equals up to three time the amount of houses and buildings built above ground. These caves have been used for many different purposes over the years. The distinctive geological nature of the mass of stone on which it stands comes from a massive volcanic eruption, which created a very soft rock that was quarried away to make space, and to create bricks for the above buildings. The earliest dated cave was created sometimes just a few years B.C. Only two of the caves are now open to the public, with nearly all of the others being privately owned due to being connected to houses and other establishments in the city. One was known for having been a “dove cove” or a place where merchants raised pigeons to sell at market to eat, while the other was newer and had served as a bomb shelter during each World War. according to most in the community, many today are used for the storage of wine and other valuables. It is amazing to wonder at the way people had designed and survived in such a subterranean world created over the last two thousand years. With such limited space atop the cliff, it only makes sense that they would have dug underneath, rather then send their people outside of the city, unprotected from awaiting enemies.
After this underground adventure, we stumbled sleepily back to our home for the night to grad a quick nap before dinner. With the about of travel that went into getting to Orvieto, we both were exhausted, but planned on just taking a short nap for about an hour so that we would still be able to sleep later that evening. Once we woke up, we sought out dinner at a restaurant just up the road from us, where we asked for recommendations from our rather aloof waiter. Once we were laden with bread, pasta and veggetables, we just about rolled ourselves the few building back down the hill and into bed to rest up for Day Number 2.
All in all, it was an exhausting but thrilling first day. Stay tuned for all of the rest of our shenanigans!
~Kelly
Devine Perks 