Our long weekend in Umbria

We decided to spend some of our President's Day weekend touring Umbria, a region just north of Rome. We'd heard great thing about the area, particulalry the town of Orvieto. The region also has fantastic wineries and, like much of Italy, has a number of agriturismos (sort of like a bed and breakfast on a farm), which we'd been looking forward to checking out.

Umbria is considered a "hilly" part of Italy with towns sometimes located on the tops of rocky hills that jut up from the lower lands, so the edges of the town go right up to the of the hill. Orvieto is situated on one of these hills. The scenery is dramatic and the buildings and streets in town are beautiful.
Orvieto is also known for it's cathedral with it's magnificent facade. We had a lot of fun taking pictures in front of this lovely building.
The region is also known for bruscetta. Normally bruscetta is made up of toast with chopped tomatos and garlic, but in this town, you could find platters of bruscetta with a variety of toppings. We simply had to taste the local specialty in a couple of places and it was delicious!


After touring Orvieto, we headed to an agriturismo that was about ten minutes away. The farm had a great view of Orvieto up on the hill and it gave you a great sense of the landscape of the area.
In this picture, the town of Orvieto sits on top of hill behind Andy and Eloise. Eloise and Claire had fun playing in the grounds of the agriturismo.



Later, we put the girls to bed in our upstairs room and went downstairs for a lovely meal, complete with freshly baked bread and other tasty treats from the farm and the nearby region. We thought the food was good and a we were again impressed by the variety of Italian food as we travel to different regions of the country.