Thursday 14th Oct.... Siena or is it Orvieto ?????

Well folks we set off for Siena today which is west north west (so I am told !!) and ended up going south to Roma !! The No 1 navigator tells me it was nothing to do with his exceptional navigating skills but to the extremely bad Italian road signs !! Upshot is that we had a good day driving through the very pretty Italian countryside and visiting places we have on the list.  

This was quite fasinating, the road that cut around the mountain had a sort of "cloister" type shelter over it to protect the road from falling rocks. We found a sort of lay-by to leap out and take photos

Next 3 pics are of a lake created by the Lake Corbara Dam.

As we couldn't find somewhere for a coffee we went to a wine tasting instead, we liked some of the wines we had tasted so purchased a couple of bottles.

Lake Corbara Dam taken from the winery

Orvieto one of many hill top towns in this region

Pienza, another "hill top town" and a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
In the Duomo here there were signs of the 1997 earthquake

Although the day started sunny a haze has decended and although still warm the photos not quite as sharp as I'd like. This photo and next 2 were taken in Montepulciano, of Italian wine fame !! so of course more wine tasting too ! We toured one of the wine cellars, very deep and interesting, the "caves" dating back centuries are now used for storage

Needless to say the towns we visited had loads more steps and steep streets !!

We had a very long (approx 250 miles round trip) but good day, different from what we had planned but hey that's the name of the game when there is time to go with the flow !
Pretty much pooped when we got back home
Song for today had to be of course "On a Clear Day" shame the haze descended as the views from the towns were awesome.




What wonderful news that the last of the Chilian miners has been rescued.