Some real bandits?

Saturday, October 22, 2011

Neil's sister and family arrived last night. It's their half term break and they are visiting us and then spending the week in Rome. To say that Alex and Eleni were happy to see their cousins would be an understatement.

Alex led them on a tour of Viterbo complete with some climbing on the Awakening statue that is installed in the valley of our town.

Beyond the Giant's face there, you can see the hill that we followed around to visit the Papal Palace. And here is just one of the several photos I took of the glamourous Eleni and Sophie.

Alex's tour took us round our favorite pizza place and a visit to my favorite Church here, the Santa Maria Novella. This time, we visited the cloisters and the crypt. Amazingly, these two sections were just discovered recently in the 1960s. They had been filled in with the remains of plague victims and dirt for hundreds of years. The revealing factor: when the new organ was placed in the Church, it sunk.

Here are some remaining plague bones.

While we were here, the Bishop visited as well. Yes, the same man who blessed Alex and Eleni in the Santa Rosa parade.

The cloisters. All of this was covered over and forgotten. You can see how interested Eleni and Sophie are in this. History fatigue was settling in with the kids, but not with the adults.

But, it was getting time for lunch so we went home and made some pasta. Keeping quiet during siesta time seemed too much of a chore, so we set out in search of some more ruins. Neil had a hand drawn map showing us the way to some more Etruscan tombs, but it was uncertain how far to go in this farmland area. Viterbo has miles of farms. Who knew?

The bandits knew. Or, that is what we referred to them as when we came upon their "hideout" at the end of a long winding road. Neil asked the five men who were hanging around the dilapidated aluminum roofed old farmhouses, "Where are the tombs?" Another car showed up with four more men. We were happy to turn around and be on our way. We found the tombs near a cypress tree. There was no ticket office left for us here though. Just a few signs and hope for good imaginations.

We had plenty of that; we all had a great time exploring the empty tombs.

Unfortunately (or fortunately), we did not bring a flashlight so we couldn't see very far. When we had stumbled in as far as we thought it safe to go, Thomas taught me flash photography archeology. We could take photos and then see what was in the tomb.

And, we had the place pretty much to ourselves! We scrambled along in and out of caves following the riverbed below. It was easy to imagine real bandits hiding our here, too. Indeed, there were remnants of campfires.

History fatigue set in again (or actual maneuvering over rocks and weeds exhaustion?) so we set off for our next favorite adventure. I did not take any photos as the baths this time, but did learn that they are mentioned in Dante's Inferno as well. In a much different context, you can find the Bulicame baths in Canto XIV.

"In silence we reached a place

Where gushing from the woods a small stream poured

So red that it still makes me shudder. As issues

That stream from Bulicame that is shared

Among the prostitutes, so this brook flowed

Down and across the sand. It was stone-floored;

Stone lined both banks and margins on each side;

And I could see that this would be our route."

Thankfully, no one of ill repute finished off our day, just pizza and wine.