Notes from Abroad

On our way to Florence the bus made a 2-hour stop at Orvieto, a small hill-top town between Rome and Florence. The stop was a surprise to me, but it looked quaint and I was excited to be off of the bus for a little while.

We took a funicular up to the town where Ben, our BusAbout guide, walked us to the Duomo. We didn’t go inside, but it was a really incredible building from the outside. So ornate! It looked like a giant vanilla and chocolate layered wedding cake.

From there we had the option to go to some sort of cave, but Alice, a girl from Australia that I’d met in Rome, and I decided to wander through the town instead. We found all sorts of cute little streets where people were just stopped in the middle catching up and chatting about this and that. It was the Italian town you always imagine – high on a hill, winding cobblestone streets with few cars (if any at all), green shutters and big wooden doors, window boxes with bright pink flowers and a slow and steady pace. There weren’t many tourists around which was perfect.

Part of the reason for our stop was to get lunch. Though we’d basically been living off of sandwiches, we decided to stop into one of the delis to get a fresh sandwich instead of one of the usual premade numbers. The shop we picked was a tiny little grocer with a tiny little old Italian lady behind the meat counter. If I had to venture a guess I would say that the entire store was about 10′ by 12′ with an aisle just wide enough for one row of 3 people to order their goods. There were a few shelves of pasta, sauce, and various other cooking items, but the real reason we were there was for a fresh sandwich, so that’s what we ordered.

Alice ordered some sort of roll-up with fresh mozzarella, some sort of meat that I think was prosciutto, and olives. If it didn’t have the olives I would have gone for the same. Instead I got freshly sliced prosciutto and fresh mozzarella on ciabatta. We sat down outside of the local teatro where we’d seen the old Italian ladies conversing earlier to chow down and people-watch.

Best sandwich I’ve ever had.

I was worried that it would be too dry without any sort of condiment on it, but boy was I wrong. It was amazing. It was so large that I couldn’t finish the whole thing and it only cost me 3.50 euro. Now that’s money well spent.

Unfortunately we only had a short time to spend in Orvietto, but I’m so glad that we got to stop there because to me it was quintessential Italy. It’s the type of town people live in. It’s the type of place you go to become a local instead of an observer. It’s exactly what I was looking for!

Tags: Adventures, City, Italy, Journal, Orvieto