Tuesday, July 26, 2005

Days 74-76: Viterbo - all roads lead to Rome

As we mentioned earlier, in Feb 2004 we cycled the East Cape of NZ and met an Italian cyclist Gilmo on 3 occasions on the journey. We have kept in touch and we are excited to visit him here in Viterbo - NW of Rome - a well preserved medieval town.

We were able to visit the Palazzo Farnese at Caprarola (Gilmo works as a guide here) - one of most important examples of Mannerist architecture in Italy. Photos don't do it justice, but the first 2 are a small example.
Viterbo is full of piazzas (small town squares) and the 3rd photo is at Piazza dei Priori.
As we walked through town we came upon this - is this a ripoff of a Waikato rugby jersey??

Gilmo also works nights at the hotel we stayed at - here we are distracting him in the hotel lobby one night!!

We were keen to visit the family of one of Carl's work colleagues in a neat village SE of Viterbo called Calcata. Due to our late communication we didn't find Angie's sister but we did find a lovely potter who gave Carl and Gilmo "a go" on the wheel. And we had a neat time in the small village built on the rock. We also stopped at a lovely waterfall on the way home and it was so hot that we jumped on in.
The last photo is of a neat little village we stopped at on our way home - can't remember the name.