Day 6: Orbetello
A rainy morning in Orbetello...... first we are going to visit the local Orbetello museum and hope for the weather to improve while we are there.
The museum is located in the powder magazine of the Spanish fort that dates from the 16th century.
We are the only visitors on this Sunday morning and we really don't know what to expect. It turns out that the Municipal Archaelogical Museum is one of the best small (or even larger) museums in our experience. The museum's holdings are a basic course in Etruscan history and culture, very nicely arranged in cases with artifacts attractively arranged in chronological order. The explanations are in Italian and very well written English and there are many drawings that very clearly show and explain techniques--like funeral practices, ceramic manufacture, farming, etc.--that were part of Etruscan life. There are also pictures of comparable objects that are held in other museums which we find very useful in understanding the exhibits. The candelabras below are surely among their most prized objects.
We end up spending two hours in the museum and come away with a better understanding of the Etruscans and a great regard for the developers of this small city museum.
And when we leave the museum, the rain has stopped and the sun is shining.
We get the car and head inland to visit some more of the small hill towns scattered in the Maremma. Our first stop is Scansano, which is the home of the red wine that we have been drinking--Morellino di Scansano. As we begin to climb into the hills, the sky in front of us is darkening, although to the south the sun is still shining. Just before we reach Scansano, the rain begins in earnest so we decide to have a proper Italian Sunday lunch at one of the restaurants on our list. We drive around the town (every other shop seems to have something to do with the local wine), locate La Vecchia Cantina, find a parking space and walk through the steady drizzle to the restaurant.
La Vecchia Cantina turns out to be a large operation...a spacious restaurant set in a barrel vaulted room with solid furniture and elaborate light fixtures as well as a shop that sells wine, food products and leather goods. We enjoy our lunch very much and are happy to be inside while the rain comes down. Diana has a plate of mixed salume that is excellent and pappardelle with wild boar ragu--the pasta is delicate and nicely done but the boar ragu is only average. My first course is a kind of terrine of vegetables--carrots, eggplant, zucchini in a damp flavored breading--(it tasted better than it sounds) and a "maltagliati"(sheets of pasta) filled with meat and topped with a very good vegetable sauce. We have a very nice (but somewhat light) Morellino di Scansano..the practice at La Cantina is to go into the shop and pick a bottle of wine off the shelf (from a very extensive selection) and bring it into the dining room.
The rain has let up a bit when we leave the restaurant and we take a short stroll into the old section of the village but it is pretty cold and damp so we don't last long before getting back in the car. Before heading back to Orbetello, we decide to make a stop at the hot springs at Saturnia. Although we don't plan to go in, I have always wanted to see them. We have a bit of drama with the GPS...the directions take us on a dirt road which turns into a hiking path which we decide to forego and head back to the paved road.
The only drama on the paved road to Saturnia is our meeting with a flock of sheep that has jumped the wall of the meadow and has filled the road as the run down to the next meadow. We only make a quick stop at Saturnia.....just long enough for me to check out the bathers in the cascades at the bottom and climb up to see the springs before they fall into the pools below.
We get to back to Orbetello about 6 pm and we are both tired and still full from our Sunday lunch. We decide to skip dinner and end up going out for a late gelato ...at the crowded gelateria which is the only one in town that is open at 10 pm.
The museum is located in the powder magazine of the Spanish fort that dates from the 16th century.
We are the only visitors on this Sunday morning and we really don't know what to expect. It turns out that the Municipal Archaelogical Museum is one of the best small (or even larger) museums in our experience. The museum's holdings are a basic course in Etruscan history and culture, very nicely arranged in cases with artifacts attractively arranged in chronological order. The explanations are in Italian and very well written English and there are many drawings that very clearly show and explain techniques--like funeral practices, ceramic manufacture, farming, etc.--that were part of Etruscan life. There are also pictures of comparable objects that are held in other museums which we find very useful in understanding the exhibits. The candelabras below are surely among their most prized objects.
We end up spending two hours in the museum and come away with a better understanding of the Etruscans and a great regard for the developers of this small city museum.
And when we leave the museum, the rain has stopped and the sun is shining.
We get the car and head inland to visit some more of the small hill towns scattered in the Maremma. Our first stop is Scansano, which is the home of the red wine that we have been drinking--Morellino di Scansano. As we begin to climb into the hills, the sky in front of us is darkening, although to the south the sun is still shining. Just before we reach Scansano, the rain begins in earnest so we decide to have a proper Italian Sunday lunch at one of the restaurants on our list. We drive around the town (every other shop seems to have something to do with the local wine), locate La Vecchia Cantina, find a parking space and walk through the steady drizzle to the restaurant.
La Vecchia Cantina turns out to be a large operation...a spacious restaurant set in a barrel vaulted room with solid furniture and elaborate light fixtures as well as a shop that sells wine, food products and leather goods. We enjoy our lunch very much and are happy to be inside while the rain comes down. Diana has a plate of mixed salume that is excellent and pappardelle with wild boar ragu--the pasta is delicate and nicely done but the boar ragu is only average. My first course is a kind of terrine of vegetables--carrots, eggplant, zucchini in a damp flavored breading--(it tasted better than it sounds) and a "maltagliati"(sheets of pasta) filled with meat and topped with a very good vegetable sauce. We have a very nice (but somewhat light) Morellino di Scansano..the practice at La Cantina is to go into the shop and pick a bottle of wine off the shelf (from a very extensive selection) and bring it into the dining room.
The rain has let up a bit when we leave the restaurant and we take a short stroll into the old section of the village but it is pretty cold and damp so we don't last long before getting back in the car. Before heading back to Orbetello, we decide to make a stop at the hot springs at Saturnia. Although we don't plan to go in, I have always wanted to see them. We have a bit of drama with the GPS...the directions take us on a dirt road which turns into a hiking path which we decide to forego and head back to the paved road.
The only drama on the paved road to Saturnia is our meeting with a flock of sheep that has jumped the wall of the meadow and has filled the road as the run down to the next meadow. We only make a quick stop at Saturnia.....just long enough for me to check out the bathers in the cascades at the bottom and climb up to see the springs before they fall into the pools below.
We get to back to Orbetello about 6 pm and we are both tired and still full from our Sunday lunch. We decide to skip dinner and end up going out for a late gelato ...at the crowded gelateria which is the only one in town that is open at 10 pm.
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