Last night an almighty thunderstorm unleashed itself on Viterbo. John slept through it. I don't know how. We were both awake at 5:45am though, so got up a little before our alarm was due and readied ourselves for a quick getaway. By 6:30am we were on the road to Rome airport to collect Bella, via a tortuous series of back roads. Her flight got in a little earlier than scheduled, at 7:45am, and she emerged from the terminal just after I'd jumped out of the car to look for her. After a quick hug we hurled ourselves into the car where John was deliberately very slow to understand his marching orders from a parking warden and thus was still waiting in the right spot. We immediately set off on the return trip to Viterbo.
Bella had booked a nice place for us in the medieval quarter, and we found it pretty easily, after first finding the nearest public carpark outside the city walls. Our room wasn't ready yet, at 10am, so we sat down in the square opposite and had a quiet drink - for Bella her first Aperol of many. It was extremely pleasant, though it started to rain after a while. With umbrellas handy but not needed, we went for a wander round the old quarter before sitting down to lunch, again in our own square. Two hours proved perfect for a leisurely lunch, by which time we could walk the 30m to our room and put our feet up for a bit.
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| First coffee stop/spritz for Bella in Italy |
Trying to set her bodyclock to Italian time, Bella wanted to avoid having an afternoon nap, so we drove 9 km to the nearby historic town of Vitorchiano for a little bit of exploring. It is a much smaller scale than Viterbo, but just as ancient. Many of the churches and buildings are 13th century. Thankfully the rain still held off despite threatening clouds. The temperature was still in the 30s despite the rain, and of course the humidity rose.
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| Detail on a building in one of Viterbo's piazzas. |
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| Interesting sculpture as we left town |
We received unwelcome news today that part of our garden at home had slipped down the hill. With the massive slips and flooding in Nelson, we had our fingers crossed we might be ok, but photos sent from a neighbour show that we've lost land at the side of our garden. Even heavier falls of rain are now blanketing Nelson, so we are anticipating that we might lose more. The house itself should be fine, with a huge retaining wall set deep in the ground behind it, but it is clearly a nerve-wracking time for many. The damage throughout Nelson, across the region as a whole, and also in other parts of the country, is unbelievable. Nelson will be clearing up debris on the roads for months and even years to come. Climate change is certainly giving us all a huge wake-up call.
The evening didn't start off well when Bella went to withdraw a tranche of Euros from a Bancomat. It took the money out of her account, but didn't spit out the cash. It was 6pm on a Friday night. A nice Italian couple took us to another branch, but it was unfortunately closed, though did have a contact number and email address. John rang up the number, talked to an English-speaking person, and was told that when the branch reopened they would find the extra money and would repatriate it. However, it would take a minimum of 10 days, more since the card was NZ-based, and the branch wasn't going to open until Wednesday as well. So Bella wasn't happy. However, she bought some small fun presents for the children in a nearby shop using another card, and that helped considerably.
We had a fabulous dinner at Trattoria L'Archetto, the place we couldn't get into last night. The food was wonderfully tasty, and set the bar very high for meals to come. We are finding the Italian food very good. There's more variety than we are used to in France, and there's always pizza or variants if you want something more simple.
