Tuesday, February 17

First excursion today. Mark did the long haul into Rome to tour the Vatican. I’ve been there, done that, had the sore feet. So I took an excursion to Tarquinia, a medieval town with an ancient past.

First we stopped at the necropolis outside of town. This is where the Etruscans used to bury their dead. It’s not a cemetery though – that’s a place where dead people “sleep” awaiting the end of the world (or something like that). A necropolis is a like a town for the dead, where they have houses and material goods of their own. I forget why.

So this Etruscan necropolis had folks buried underground, with little round houses above them. Those houses are long gone, but aerial photography revealed the disturbances in the ground. And when they started digging, they realized that this particular necropolis was very popular, with some 6500 tombs. We got to view a few of them, which have been given protective shelters. You go down a steep flight of stairs and view the room through a glass door.

So here’s what makes the Etruscans interesting: They pre-date Roman civilization. There they were, around 700 B.C., with plenty of established culture, when the Greeks showed up. This led to improvements in their pottery skills, among other things. There were also new, um, greek illustrations on their tomb walls. Our tour guide called it “religious sex.”
Then we went into the town of Tarquinia, which has an excellent Etruscan museum, and some cranky women in it who scold you for taking pictures. There we saw some sarcophagi -- they were mostly pre-carved, and when someone died they’d plop on a head that looked like him -- and some more naughty illustrations.
Back to the bus to visit a lame Agritourism place that served olive paste on bread (no thanks) and their own wine (thanks). I met some nice people, including two 60-ish sisters from England who now live in the states. We chatted about the amazing hedges on the property made entirely of rosemary. And then I had some kind of allergic reaction to the wine, and had to excuse myself for one of my epic coughing fits. I often make myself proud this way.

Except for a motorcycle crash we witnessed (man OK, bike in pieces), the excursion kind of ended with a fizzle. But I adored our guide. His English vocabulary was excellent, including fancy words like “apogee” and “strata.” As a current student of German, I was blown away by his ease with the verb conjugation “it was reported to have had....” Sometimes he would offer 2 or 3 different ways to express his thoughts, exploring different idioms or phrases to find just the right way to get his point across. Show-off.

After we returned to the port, I enjoyed the sunset from my balcony and watched the buses returning from Rome.
Mark’s got in at 6:04, almost 11 hours after he left. We sailed at 7:00 p.m., with another undetectably smooth departure. Our captain rocks.