Saturday's pirate dance

Saturday 11th May, continued

Having only consumed one of the little packets of biscuits that they put in your cabin and an ice-cream (all be it a very delicious ice-cream) since 9am we were rather peckish when we got back on the ship. Everything was gearing up for the evening meal but we legged it up 10 decks (we have been trying to avoid the lifts in an effort to burn energy, plus they are a bit temperamental and time was of the essence) to make it to the poolside pizzeria 10 minutes before it shut. I really enjoyed my hungrily eaten pizza (we were in Italy after all) and chips (it was only a little pizza). 

We'd have to wait a while for that to go down to make space for dinner. There were lots of other cruise ships in Civitavecchia so we took a walk around the deck to look at them all - I was particularly excited by the one with loads of waterslides at its stern. 

The captain's disdain of the Italians became apparent. He'd announced the previous evening that there would be quite a few cruise ships in Civitavecchia that day and due to the lack of "control" that "Port Control" ever exerted he would not be able to guarantee our docking time, even though it was booked for 7am. Then, this evening, he said that we would have to have a tug out of the port, even though there was no need, and insinuated that this was just for "jobs for the boys". 

We had the pool to ourselves for another vigorous pre-dinner swim. Again, on a ship with 3000 passengers this amazes me. In preparation for dinner Matt decided that his beard had got long enough and took his clippers to it. Unfortunately he had an accident with them on the back of his neck and I was thus entrusted to even things up. Hair dressing is clearly not one of my natural abilities but I was trusted enough to sort it out. I saw this as my perfect opportunity to adorn Matt with one of those little rat tail tufty bits popular with small Dutch boys (at least this was the case on French campsites in the early 1990s). Matt didn't like this style so I was benevolent and did my best to give him a straight hairline.

Dinner was a peculiar affair. We were on a table of 8 which is a difficult size to have a conversation involving the whole table so Matt and I mostly chatted with a lively older couple who had been engaged for 18 years. Also on our table were:

• a miserable looking middle-aged couple. He perked up a bit when talking about football. She didn't perk up at all.
• an older couple - Gladys and Glen. I think that Gladys was one of those older people who is deaf but doesn't realise it. She became very animated when talking about the potteries, the evils of drink and the unnecessary use of mobility scooters. They both became animated when talking about the gym. Gladys was also disproportionately excited about fountains. In this respect (rather than that of the potteries or the gym) Matt had found a like-minded traveller.

We were very late dining this evening and observed the waiters counting cutlery as we finished our coffees. I presumed that this was a safety precaution (to make sure no-one had removed a knife to use as a weapon) but our fellow diners suggested it was more likely to be to check for losses from an economic perspective.

I instructed Matt to be careful in his leading of the dance tonight as I had a rather short dress on; but we were quite successful, especially to my request of the Pirates of the Caribbean Tango. I particularly like this music because you can really get into character with some well placed ooh-ahh pirate noises. 

Saturday's bus problem

Saturday 11th May, continued

After a thorough investigation of the necropolis we strolled back into Tarquinia town. There had not been many people at the burial site but it was even quieter here. It seems that between 1pm and 4pm everyone stops for a (delicious smelling) long lunch and / or a nap (this is one of the things that most appeals to me about living in a Mediterranean country. Everything was shut now - happily apart from the ice-cream shop - it must have been low season as even the bars and restaurants appeared to be on a break. So we refreshed ourselves with a gelato: coffee + pistachio for Matt and cinnamon + orange for me. 

Nature report 3

• Tarquinia has embraced the concept of a park for dogs on one side of the road and a park without them on the other side. I greatly approve of this type of canine apartheid. 
• We saw someone training a duckling (or maybe a gosling) in their front garden. At least this was the most plausible explanation of what they were doing. 
• Amazing lizard spotting today.
  
  Including some big green ones and one with a green body and brown tail. They are very camera shy.
• Like Cannes, Tarquinia is pleasingly free from seagulls (it's not very far from the sea) but it does have a pigeon issue. They seem to enjoy living in nooks in old walls. Fortunately we both avoided getting pooed on (although apparently this is lucky so maybe we weren't so fortunate after all.
• In the three hour shut down the only notable homo-sapien nature we observed was the occasional passage of a Boy Scout or Girl Guide (or whatever the local equivalent is) and an elderly man singing loudly outside a church. I don't think he was drunk, just happy. I think I would sing loudly too if I lived somewhere as lovely as Tarquinia.

We wandered in the town a bit more. It was one of those lovely places with an old building or beautiful view around each corner. I think I got an impression of what Italy would have been like in the 1950s, only now there were more parked cars and fewer mopeds. 

As the afternoon wore on we decided that we should make our way back to the ship. There would have been much worse places to be stuck than Tarquinia but we didn't fancy our chances of catching up with the ship in Corsica. The lady in the tourist information explained that we could get the small bus at 1700 or the big bus at 1620. It was 1615 and for this earlier bus we would have to buy tickets in advance at the tobacconist (they may be advanced with dog division, but not with bus ticket provision), so Matt waited at the bus stop to hold up the bus should it arrive and I dashed off to buy the tickets. By 1650 the bus had not turned up. We mused over the possibilities:

• this was one of the rarest of occasions in Italian public transport and the bus was running ahead of schedule
• the bus driver had overslept during his (or her) nap and/or overeaten (or possibly over drunk) during his (or her) lunch break
• the bus didn't actually exist at all and was merely a racket to make unsuspecting travellers buy tickets for journeys that will never happen.

At 1700 the big bus still hadn't turned up and we decided to cut our touristical Euro losses and get the small bus (that turned up on time) back to the port.

Saturday's necropolis

Saturday, May 11th 2013: continued

On the bus to Tarquinia Matt had pointed out some road signs for a "Necropolis". Since he (and me for that matter) tend to point out every road sign going I had dismissed this as "probably the municipal cemetery". But flicking through my helpful town guide it seemed that it might be something more interesting: an Etruscan necropolis. We located it on the right hand edge of our touristical map but as the touristical map didn't have a scale or any directional markings it wasn't clear whether it really was a 10-15 minute walk away (based on our experience of wandering the town), or whether it had been put schematically here and was actually located at the End of a Very Long Road. (As an aside I would like to applaud the towns where they mark the distance, or even better the estimated walking time, on their touristical signs.)

Fortunately Tarquinia had been gifted a reasonably logical cartographer. The map was to (an unspecified) scale and after walking 20 minutes along a fairly unlikely looking road we came to the UNESCO World Heritage Site. It turns out that this is the largest (known) Etruscan burial site.

There are about 6000 (known) "graves", of which most are "basic" burial mounds, but there are about 200 (known) decorated "sepulchres" (tombs). (Sorry about all the inverted commas.) Of these about 20 are open to the public. They are conserved within little "huts" and you view the subterranean burial chambers through glass / plastic / perspex (or something of that nature) - this is because the humidity of the visitors can damage the ancient wall art.

The sepulchres (no more inverted commas, I promise) date from the 6th to the 2nd centuries BC and I was fascinated to see the evolution of concepts of the after life. In the most ancient of the sepulchres the walls are decorated with scenes of banqueting, dancing, music and hunting. At this time (or so goes the theory) the Etruscans believed that the spirit of the deceased lived on in the place that they were buried.

I would choose 3 of those 4 things to decorate my burial chamber with if that was the case. In the later sepulchres you could see the influence of the Greek Theory of the after-life with images of people being led through doors to the Next World. Some of the later ones also had some erotic scenes, apparently influenced by the cult of Dionysus (whoever he or she was - perhaps I should find out). 

I'm embarrassed to say that I knew nothing about the Etruscans before, I know a little now and might even pay a visit to that section of the British Museum to learn more. The necropolis was most certainly worth parting with a few tourist Euros for, especially when you consider (given the going rate of 50 cents a go) we each had one Euro's worth of toilet usage on our visit. 

Saturday's Italian jaunt

Saturday, May 11th 2013

Today's port was Civitavecchia from where you could take a tour to Rome, or with a little skill in the use of Italian public transport visit under your own steam. Having spent a leisurely week in Rome last October Matt and I had decided before we came on holiday that we would be giving a day trip into the eternal city a miss.

If we had been a bit more organised we would have carefully investigated the alternative touristical options from Civitavecchia. But we were not sufficiently organised - not even to remember to pack our Italy guidebook or to borrow one from the ship's library - and we were unwilling to fork out for the expensive roaming charges for data via our mobiles. So it would just have to be an adventure.

Over breakfast (mostly fresh fruit to atone for last night) we narrowed down the options to Tarquinia, a bit north along the train line, or Ortobella, a bit more north along the train line. This semi-decision was made because:

• They both looked like reasonably sized blobs on the map - even though I have learnt (from meanderings in Cornwall) that this is not always a good strategy for picking locations for a day trip
• I had translated Ortobella as "beautiful garden" which I thought sounded nice.

We used our skills in Italian public transport and identified that we had just missed a train going the way that we wanted and the next one wouldn't be for over an hour. So we decided to investigate the buses. This would require a higher level of skill in the use of Italian public transport but surely there would be something connecting these reasonably sized blobs on the map. I maxed out my skills and found out that there was a bus to Tarquinia in 10 minutes - so that was where we would go. I also found out that I had misread Ortobella on the map - it was actually Orbatella (so may not have been so horticultural or beautiful after all); we could always go on there later if Tarquinia proved touristically inadequate.

But Tarquinia didn't disappoint. We arrived after a pleasant bus trip (not guaranteed with southern European bus drivers), were directed to the tourist information office (this really was a top notch bus driver) and collected a map and town guide.

 

It's a medieval town and was ideal for wandering; we didn't really need the map. We made our (slow) way to the opposite side of the town walls from where we had come in, from where we enjoyed some fantastic views across the Tuscania countryside (not to be confused with Tuscany which I was). There was no need to Go Up Something High today, which was a good job as although Tarquinia is well provisioned with towers none of them were available for touristical climbing.