Visiting Orvieto

I very much enjoy visiting people when I am traveling, whether they are long term residents of the place I am visiting or have temporarily lived there. It is nice to see a place through the eyes of someone who is there longer than I am. My friends Barb and Ethan Canin and their three children are spending 6 months in Orvieto, Italy, a hill town near Rome. When I visited them, they were 2 months into their stay and it was such fun to tour the very walkable city with them and see it through their eyes. They have all been taking Italian, and with everyone we met they insisted on speaking it, rahter than allowing the conversation to take place in English--such fun to see, as that would be my approach as well. Suffer with me as I struggle with your tongue, otherwise I will never get the hang of it. It is a good way to build comraderie, to say that you will try hard to communicate. Orvieto is a wonderful town--it is up on a hill, but there is a funicular up the worst of it, so when you get to the top, there is very little in the way of up and down walking--so you are not winded going out to get bread each day. On the ride up to town from the train station you pass through groves of olive trees and vineyards. You know right away that you are in a place that grows things, and while Orvieto is a bit on the touristy side of things, the quality of cheese, wine, and olive oil from the region is wonderful. We brought home 2 Orvieto white wines and 2 local cheeses, and only wished we could have transported more--such a treat to have a taste of the town when we were far far away in the town that we live in.