Cantine in Orte

Viterbo has the Festival di Santa Rosa. The nearby town of Orte, which is about 40 minutes away by car, is a hill town that celebrates with medieval days. Those of you who have been to Italy and driven on the A1 Autostrada north to Orvieto or points north would have driven right by Orte. During Orte's festivities, a tradition is to open up their tavernas and have medieval feasts. Last night, a group of us from school and many of the students and their host families dined in Orte.

The hill town of Orte

This one lane road is the road off the hill town or Orte.

Amazingly, Italy is blessed with plenty of natural spring water. Here is a public water source that is built beneath the town square. Water flows naturally and is clean and potable.

Each neighborhood (essentially a couple blocks) has a name and flag pattern. This is a game that races marbles down a track. You bet by placing money on which marble from the neighborhood you think will win.

At eight, we descended down into a taverna, which was carved out of the rock.

The taverna set up and ready for action.

In the medieval spirit, the servers were dressed in period clothing.

The round thing is rice and cheese inside a fried batter. Bread and pate and the third was bread with a mushroom sauce.

Gnocchi

In the center of the photo the two men on the left are Frank (Latin Teacher) and Pat (glasses and is the program director). Across from each male is their respective wives, Linda and Jeanne.

Papadrelle with Wild Boar

Dave L., a Brit from north of Liverpool who married an Italian woman (Roberta the administrative assistant) and the guy who will cut my hair as he is a professional barber.

The boy about to eat some pasta is Julian, Pat's oldest son and to his right, Daniel, Dave and Roberta's son.

Pig's shin, known in Italian as "STINCO" with eggplant (melanzzani) and roasted peppers (pepperocini).

Italian men love to sing. Here are a bunch of the host dad's in action.

The cookies are dry and tasteless, but dip them in sweet wine and it becomes a tasty, alcoholic dessert!