John and Bethenie: Umbrian Wine Weekend!!

Sept 30
When John and I first moved to Italy, I told him that I wanted to take a trip to Tuscany (Region North of Rome) during the grape harvest season to watch them harvest and make some wine. Well that time finally came only we went to the Region of Umbria instead of Tuscany. Some friends of ours found a company, Discovering Umbria, back in June that rents out a holiday apartment and takes you on different wine tours. They absolutely loved it and have been telling us we need to try a trip up there.

I contacted Alessandra, one of the co-owners, a few weeks back and started setting up our trip. They only had a few free weekends left before December and two of them where going to be when we have some friends out here, so those weekends wouldn't work. We chose the last weekend in September and were so glad we did.

We started off our trip on Friday morning, early, with a train ride from Aversa to Orvieto. We drove by Orvieto a few months after I got out here on our trip to Venice and I told John I wanted to visit that town. Luckily we were able to fit that in with this trip as well.

Alessandra was nice enough to pick us up at the Orvieto Train station and take us to Il Palazzo del Gusto for our first wine tasting of the weekend.

The Church and building above the wine cellar

This is the Greek name for Orvieto and means "The Town Where Wine Flows"

Inside the wine cellar which in Orvieto, is in a cave under the ground

They cave just kept going deeper and deeper

We left Il Palazzo del Gusto and had a little bit of time to walk around Orvieto before it was time to head to Todi.

Orvieto is a hill town, which means the original town of Orvieto was built on the top of a hill away from the valleys of the mountains and other hills.

Views looking from the top of the town down

Walking through Orvieto, a church

The municipal building

The Duomo in Orvieto

This church was AMAZING!!!

This is all mosaic

The stained glass center (from the inside of the church) with the apostles and other important people

Very detailed, and their churches details were grape vines

The outside, side of the church. The inside was also striped in black and white like this

LOVE the arches!!

After walking around we spent the rest of our trip in and around Todi and loved every minute of it. We had a little bit of time once we got to Todi before the sun went down, so we were able to sightsee and enjoy the town.

Todi is another hill town and this was one of our first views looking out over the valleys

Todi is made up of three different types of architecture, from three different times in history, each section is set apart by a gate or wall and this was one of them.