Italy 2024 - Day 15 / Viterbo & Rome

Steps today: 22 186 / 14.63 km

Our last vacation day! And we ended it with a day trip to Viterbo - a new destination for us.

We arrived just before 11AM, explored a bit and I was very underwhelmed! Was this it? The main gate, a little street and a square full of construction? Can't be!

We stopped for a drink, and I was extra deflated when I saw the glass!

Afterwards, I pulled out my map and saw that a large portion of the sights I wanted to see weren't in the area we were in. Thank God! Viterbo turned out to be very charming!

There were a LOT of barriers and constructions areas all over the city so most of the fountains were blocked but it's because they were setting up gardens and flowers in all the public places for some upcoming event... It will look great whenever they finish.

We started with the Sanctuary of Santa Rosa to see the mummy...

Then, we just wandered through the old town - so picturesque! The stone buildings were so attractive!

We visited the Chiesa di San Giovanni Battista del Gonfalone to see the amazing trompe l'oeil ceiling.

The Santa Maria Nuova church that is about 1000 years old and has a pulpit outside

It was 1PM by then and we wanted to have lunch, but we couldn't find a place! After about a half an hour of searching for somewhere nice, we were getting BEYOND fed up and cranky and just threw up our arms and went 'anywhere'.

A little hole in wall, blink-and-miss-it place.

Talk about serendipity, it turned out to be one of the best meals of the entire trip!

After lunch we visited the Cathedral of San Lorenzo...  I have no pictures! Was I all churched-out or did I just not take pictures, or was it not open? For the life of me I cannot remember.

A few images from the piazza

And then a walk to Panorama point of the Valle and Cathedral

Again, more of the wild poppies we see everywhere

It was back to Rome after this; the train was milk-run but there was a stop near St Peter's so we got off there to go see the Square one last time.

Just outside the Vatican walls, we stopped for my Aperol Spritz do-over... I could not let that sippy cup monstrosity in Viterbo be my last Spritz!! no way!

And now...  where to have "The Last Supper"?

Frank and I are very vacation-compatible, but over the years I notice the one big difference we have is that he is very ready to call it quits on the last night, while I don't want to have a fast get-it-over-with meal.  He goes along with it to make me happy, but his displeasure is written all over his face. He's a trooper!

We found a HUGE restaurant row...  but no one was eating! It was very strange. I wanted to have a look at some examples before sitting down. I admit I was starting to get fed up too, so we started walking in the direction of the hotel and said we'd stop at the next place that serves pizza!

Well, the next place we found only opened at 7PM. It was 6:45 why not let us have a drink for 15 minutes? I guess they did not want our money.

We kept on trekking and stumbled upon this place.... easy to miss from the outside! It was lovely.

I HAD to have one last prosciutto of course, this one intrigued me because it was "hand cut". I hated it! too hard and at one point I had to spit out a bite because it was like I was chewing cud.  What a shame.

My wine and pizza were fine

It was a nice evening, but we had to wait FOREVER for the bill! We were close to the hotel thankfully, but we needed to get the show on the road because we had to pack and wanted to get to bed as soon as possible because we had a 2:45AM wake up call!

When we ordered the coffees, we asked for the bill at the same time. The waiter didn't care, he was beyond over busy! It was almost 9PM by the time he did a round of bills for many tables, and lots of people were waiting for the tables too. I made a show of tapping my card on the table so those waiting in line could see we wanted to leave... it took FOREVER

We went back to the room, packed, made extra extra extra sure all our alarms were set to wake us up at 2:45AM and hit the hay.

Our flight to Paris was at 6AM, so we had to be at the airport by 4AM. Under normal circumstances we'd take public transportation, but not in the middle of the night! At that time of the morning however, we knew traffic would not be an issue so we had the car come at 3:30AM

I was stressing for MONTHS before my trip about this moment! Would I wake up? Would the car arrive? Will I miss my flights? I also had all sorts of disaster scenarios in mind like: what if we accidentally close the door of the building behind us and leave a suitcase in the entrance without a key to get back in and retrieve it? such anxiety and in the end nothing went wrong. Everything went off without a hitch.

So, another great trip in the books....  next one is coming in October! See you then :)