Civita

Since three of the six in our travel group are ill, or are on the verge of being ill, we made three day trips instead of a whole weekend away. So far, it's turned out great. We made our way to Civita today.

Civita looks as though it just erupted from the ground, accessible only by pedestrian bridge. For years, the only way supplies could be brought to this tiny town was on the back of a donkey. The donkey has now been replaced with a scooter, driven by the donkey rider's son.

We made the 7.58 train by about one minute, only after a sprint to the train station from Santa Chiara. When we got to the train station in Orvieto, we needed a bus to Bagnoregio. We saw our big, blue bus coming, and then we saw it drive away. A new friend who’s studying in Roma chased the bus a few hundred feet and convinced the driver to stop, so we could all board. With few other bumps in the road, we arrived in front of the pedestrian bridge. Civita is truly, in the most literal way possible, a city on a hill. It rises up from a rippling valley that stretches as far as we could see.

The population is about 25, so the seven us of were responsible for today’s major population shock. We made a pass through the town and found a trail that led to Etruscan ruins. We saw the ruins and continued to hike, following a cat that had been hanging around us since we’d arrived. We followed the winding trails and our feline guide and took in some of the amazing geology.

For lunch, we headed back up to town and put our heads into a room with an ancient, Etruscan oil press. The apparent owner waved us in next door. He sat us at a table in what could only be described as a cave and lit a candle for us. From under his counter, he lifted a massive jug of red wine, poured it into a smaller jug, and poured us each a glass. We asked for bruschetta, and so he toasted pieces of bread from a wicker basket over smoldering coals, covering each with olive oil and tomatoes. Through a clumsy conversation in Italian, we found out that he made both the wine and the olive oil. We took two bottles of this wine with us, a Sangiovese Merlot that’s aromatic, rich, refreshing, with no finish to speak of.

And while Rick Steve’s has probably written an entire book about how to enjoy this charming town, we still felt like we found it ourselves.