Tarquinia Necropolis

On the third day I really over slept. Thankfully the hotel was very accommodating with breakfast and then took us to the Tarquinia Necropolis to view the tombs. Wow! What a fabulous sight. It was very much like visiting the Valley of the Kings in Egypt. There were 19 tombs open to see and I trekked with my broken toe into each and every one.

Pic. 1 is of containers used to house cremated remains in a cemetery.

Pic. 2 is of the area where the tombs are. Pic. 3 is of one of the secured entrances to the tombs. Pic. 4 is of the narrow steeps steps down to the tombs. Each entrance was different and this was of medium length. Most of the steps were longer. The tombs unearthed in the 1800s had very steep steps. Those unearthed in the the 1960s had more modern easier to navigate steps. The whole areas was filled with underground tombs. Apparently there are thousands of them. Not all have been unearthed and some that have been unearthed have been filled back in to preserve them.

Pic. 5 is of one entrance to a tomb that was dug out of a hillside.

Tomb interiors

Each tomb had a sign describing the paintings inside. Here are some pics. of the interiors. They varied from brilliantly colored to very faded. Some were detailed and beautiful, others primitive and a little flat. All were interesting for what the portrayed about the people and how they lived.

Lunch

After spending two wonderful hours exploring the tombs our hotel picked us up for lunch. This time we wisely used the voucher program and had a splendid appetizer, pasta dish, meat dish and desert. I think we were supposed to have a salad dish also but I thought she was asking if we wanted coffee so I think we turned it down. Oh well, it was so much food that we had to take some back to the room so we didn't really need the extra dish. The food was delicious! The meat dish melted in your mouth and the desert was creamy and wonderful. I forgot to get a picture of the appetizer which is a shame as it was beautiful. I also dug into the pasta dish before I realized I should take it's photo also.

City hall

Our last stop was city hall. They had some very impressive murals (pics. 1 and 2) as well as a very impressive meeting room (pic. 3).

After returning to the hotel I attempted to book a spa treatment but had waited to long so was unable to book one. My mom headed out to explore the working farm and I rested my broken toe. My mom returned with a bunch of grapes (pic. 4) that had escaped the grape harvest that ended last week. They were very sweet and a real treat!

This brings me to the end of our agriturismo adventure in Italy. Tomorrow we head to the cruise ship.

Door sign

I created my door sign which is printed on magnetic paper. A door sign is a habit I picked up a few cruises ago when someone from the cruise critic group made them for everyone. It was really nice to have a way to identify your own door when walking up to it that I've made my own ever since. On this one I created my own logo for the Ancient Empires cruise from one of my pictures when I went to Egypt this spring. The other logo is the official one from the transatlantic cruise critic group. I'm traveling with my mom, so I listed both our names, along with their translation in Egyptian hieroglyphics. I also included my cruise critic handle so anyone looking for us from the group can find us. The cruise critic group is who we have our independent excursions with. Along the bottom I included a picture from our Tuscan-hillside-like country hotel near Tarquinia that we are staying at pre-cruise. The center picture is of the brand new Celebrity Equinox and the right picture is the pool area. This represents the progress of the trip as we start off at the hotel, spend the middle portion getting from port to port on the ship and at the end when we have 6 days at sea crossing the Atlantic we are surely going to be lounging by the pool.

2 Days to go

I packed about half way yesterday. Then had to give up due to my toe. Hopefully I can finish off today, leaving time tomorrow to think of anything I forgot or pick anything else I need up. I sure wish my toe was healed but I guess that is too much to expect in just over a week.

A lot has happened...

A lot has happened since I last posted. Everything is set for leaving in 6 days. With the exception of my not having my passport! But I should get it back today. You see, I dropped it off at the passport office for extra pages on Tues. last week. I was supposed to pick it up on Thurs. But I broke my toe on Wed. and didn't get to go get it.

So what's this? A broken toe. I called my Dr. to see if they thought the insurance would accept a cancellation but they thought they wouldn't because it is a little toe. I was so bummed! If I had bought cancel for no reason protection, I probably would have used it and lost the required 25%.

The end result is I'm going on a 32 day trip with a fairly newly broken toe. Thankfully I have first class air into Rome so I'll just put the seat into flat bed mode, take some pain killers and go to sleep.