Wednesday 10th April.
We woke up early again, but this time so we did not have to
pay for a second half day. The Italians have a great way of maximising their
income from these tourist sites. We had
a beautiful drive, as always following the green routes, keeping off the
motorways, and we stopped to picked some wild flowers before reaching Orvieto
(one of Jacqui’s favourite Italian wines). This is a large town perched on the top of a
cliff and one that would not let in Motorhomes in, so we had to double back
down the hill searching for an alternative route to our next destination, Lake
Bolssena. We stopped at Bolssena and had
a great early lunch, in the sunshine (20 degrees at last) on a park bench, next
to the lake which was so tranquil and beautiful, watched by a few interested
residents and some ducks. Reluctantly we got back into Buster and headed off to our final
destination for the day, Montalto di Castro on the Mediterranean coast. This was only an 'en route' stop to Tarquina and was not what we expected at all. It was an almost deserted sea side resort that
had seen better days. Even our camping site had been abandoned. Thankfully I
had identified two possible stopovers for here and we moved onto the next which
was in the process of being established due to the closure of the other. We
parked our van had a chat to the local German campers and then set of exploring
the empty town.
Thursday 11th April
Our main focus today was the Etruscan tombs at Tarquina. Tarquina was founded in the 12 century BC - that is a very long time ago! It reached its prime in the 4th Century BC. The necropolis was formed in 7th Century BC and over 6000 tombs have been excavated since 1489. About 20 of these are now open to the public. When one considers the age of these buildings you cannot help but be amazed at the quality of the paintings that line the tombs. We spent a good couple of hours going underground and coming back up into the beautiful countryside.
After this visit we set off for Tivoli, east of Rome. Again we chose the scenic route and found another beautiful lake to have our lunch: Lago di Bracciano. from there we skirted around the lake, picking up the ring road around Rome and some heavy traffic before arriving in Tivoli in the late afternoon. Tivoli was another conveninent stop on our way south but it did have two interesting places we wished to visit: Villa d'Este and the Adriana Villa. 
Friday 12th April
We were up early to visit the Villa d'Este. This is a renaissance villa built in the 16th Century for Cardinal Ippolita d'Este. The villa was interesting and contained some highly decorated frescos and painted ceilings but these were surpassed (in my opinion) by the wonderful and multiple fountains in the garden. We spent an enjoyable couple of hours here before heading down the hill to Villa Adriana. This was Emperor Hadrian's Summer residence.
It was one of the largest and most elaborate villas in the Roman empire. Unlike Mike, I am not always impressed by roman remains but this was quite special. We spent quite a long time here admiring it all and then thought we must get back on the road as we had quite a long journey to make to Cassino.
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