Of Cats, Polenta and more Etruscans

The starving wild kitten we began feeding in July and christened 'Batcat',

is now a fully grown-up feline of the female gender.  She no longer hisses and spits and will allow us a brief stroke when putting out her food, but attempts at further intimacy are furiously rebuffed and often result in disappearance at escape velocity!

Woke up this morning to cats yowling in the olive groves and suspect that Batcat is on heat, though she turned up innocently for breakfast with scarcely a hair out of place.   When she is tame enough to catch we intend to take her to an animal charity for neutering, but at the moment that seems a distant prospect.

Meanwhile I'm trying to increase my repertoire of Italian cooking.  Friends told me that Polenta is easy - you simply need a non-stick pan and the patience to stir for 30 minutes.  So I made the attempt and produced something that should have looked like a golden mound, crisp at the edges, but actually resembled a pale yellow breast implant when it flopped out of the pan, and tasted of nothing much.  Hey ho!  Back to the recipe book.

I'd like to share some more pictures from Orvieto, if you can bear it?  This is Civita di Bagno Regio, a few miles from where we were staying at Lake Bolsena.

Civita is miraculous - a pillar of rock rising up from the centre of a huge volcanic crater (which reminds one of  pictures of Colorado) topped with a very ancient walled town.

The front gateway is Etruscan, as are the chambers hollowed out of the rock beneath.  This is a staircase cut into the rock to go down to a water cistern.  And yes, we did go down!

  Most of the buildings inside the walls are medieval.  The streets are very narrow and shady, so not good for taking photographs unless you have special lenses.   This was one of the little bars.

Earthquakes destroyed parts of the town in 1349,  1695   and 1764,  though the ruins of many houses are still standing.

 Erosion has since caused many of the outer buildings to collapse into the crater.   This house and garden (inhabited) were overhanging the edge and someone had inserted wooden props into the rock under them. But I wouldn't have spent a night there for any money!!

 Only 5 families now live there permanently, though there are shops, B and Bs (all safely in the middle!), and some lovely small restaurants.  It's one of the most beautiful places I've seen in Italy.  Utterly unique.  This is a cactus on someone's garden wall overlooking the canyon.

 

New Year in Orvieto - with Jazz

Just back from Orvieto and thoroughly exhausted from having such a good time. I haven't been able to put up anything on the blog for five days because the small hotel out in the country didn't have Wi-Fi.  There was an old computer you could rent by the hour in the foyer, but I was never in the hotel long enough to use it - what was going on elsewhere was just too tempting!   Over the next few days I'll be posting a few photographs to give you a glimpse of what is one of the most beautiful and historic areas of Italy. This was my first visit and I was completely knocked out by it.  Even on a grey day (and we only had one) it was wonderful.

Orvieto is in Umbria, on the border with Lazio, south of Tuscany.  The area has a violent volcanic history and the scenery is spectacular.  Orvieto itself is a walled town sitting on top of an outcrop of volcanic 'tuff' - a pale rock which is soft and looks a bit like pumice.  Winding your way up the rock into the town takes a long, long, time - better to leave the car outside and walk, but it must have been ideal for defence against invaders.  

Inside there are the narrow streets, piazzas, and that mixture of Etruscan, Roman, medieval and Napoleonic buildings that make Italy so beautiful.  No photographs can do it justice.  The Cathedral - taller than any other building in the whole town - is really spectacular in white marble.

The town is in the centre of the Etruscan area and was first settled by them more than 3000 years ago.  Everywhere you go you stumble on Etruscan temples and walls.  The rock under the town has been tunneled out to make tombs which you can visit. And there are other tunnels used by medieval despots fleeing their critics! 

Orvieto hotels were completely booked out by the Jazz Festival - a winter edition of the famous Umbria Jazz Festival - and so we had to stay about 20km from the town in a place called Bolsena.  It's the largest volcanic lake in Europe - the result of a volcano that exploded a hundred or so thousand years ago.  The area is still thermal and there are a lot of Etruscan sites there too - perfect for anyone who loves landscape and history all in one package.  Our hotel (built for the summer trade)  was almost empty, on the edge of the lake, with the most beautiful views. 

In Italy people spend their New Year's eve eating with their families and then they take to the streets for a grand 'passaggiata'.  We watched the sun go down in Lake Bolsena before eating in a local Osteria and then drove into Orvieto for the fun.  It was very hard work fighting your way through the crowded streets.  Here, everyone was watching a group of fire-eaters performing in the Piazza.

At midnight there are the fireworks.  I'm a complete child when it comes to the bangs and flashes - I could watch them for hours.  Italian fireworks aren't like anything else - no health and safety issues here - they just let them off in the piazza in the middle of the crowd and you have to get out of the way as best you can.  This year, in front of the cathedral, they were wonderful.  Lots of noise and exploding multi-coloured fireballs.

Afterwards, fueled by hot punch,  we went to the theatre for a  jazz concert supposed to start at 1am, which didn't get going until about 1.45.  It was an Italian programme.  The Lydian Sound Orchestra comes from Vicenza, near Venice, and they are brilliant.  They were playing with a Sardinian trumpeter called Paolo Fresu who was equally good, though I was struggling to stay awake by about 3.30!!

Left the theatre about 4am and then made the 20km drive back to the hotel (guess who drew the short straw for that one?) to fall into bed about 5 absolutely shattered!  Worth it though.    Tomorrow I'll put up some pictures of the Etruscan tombs we found in a wood and were able to crawl into.  It was unbelievable!