Yesterday afternoon, Sara, her dad, Marco (Sara's boyfriend) and I went to visit Farfa and Toffia, two little villages quite close by...
So first we went to Farfa, it is really a tiny town and there's not much to do except to visit its church which is really beautiful and its main attraction. It is also the church where Giumberto and Lori got married and where they go on Christmas and easter.... So we had a tour (unfortunately, it was three Italian to one English so they won, haha :) ) which was in Italian but Sara and Marco translated for me...we first went to the abbey (?) type thing, you know, like the back and underground of the church....the church was built around the year 872!! so it is super old but most of it had worn away from the war over the Farfa river close by and also from an earthquake that happened later on... however, some of the original walls and windows were there and there was a little museum with all the remaining artifacts from how it was originally.... so we walked around and the guide showed us all the artifacts and the amazing view from the top of the church (as it is on a hill)...
Then she took us into one of the library's...she said that in the abbey/church there are over 60000 books all of records of history over Farfa, biblical writings or maps and stuff of new discoveries from those times.... we only got to see on of about 10 rooms storing the books, and there were just bookshelves everywhere! It had the really musty sort of old book smell and was dimly lit but it was so cool that everywhere you looked there were just these ancient, tea-bag-stain coloured books...there were also some display cabinets with they sort of extra special books. Like one that I really liked was a massive( like the size of my suitcase) music book with the notes and words (in Italian) and on each page there was a stamp with embedded gold...the lady said that they reason it was so big is because in those times they didn't have individual hymnals or projectors with the words, so everyone had to read off this one book in church to sing. Another thing that I found really cool was that one of the books was written before they had even invented paper, so instead it was written on animal skin (like the type that you put over African drums, etc)! :) most of the books were all super old, from around the 15th century! After the tour, we went to look at the actual church, which was really beautiful! Outside it has a little cobbled court yard and inside was just stunning! I especially liked the roof which was painted wood with little streams of gold, etc and stuff engraved in and everything, hard to describe but breath-taking! :)
Then we went to Toffia, so far my favourite village. Again, like most of these little towns, it was right at the top of the hill which meant that it has truly stunning views. What I really liked about this town is that it felt like a little community, there were children running about and playing, there was a granny sitting outside knitting, men chatting at the little kiosk type shop over beer and mothers hanging up washing, etc, really a cute little closed group.... :) the actual village reminded me a little bit of what I expected Napels to be like, with colourful washing hanging from the windows and on the electricity wires or across string hoisted between two windows, beautiful little cobbled streets sort of like alleys everywhere, some too narrow to even fit a car in between...and loads of little flower pots outside the windows and fitted into the walls and stuff and also all the house were right up close to each other and quite high, most of them were coated in a rough sort of stone and concrete look on the outside...Right at the top of the village there was also this little church with a really beautiful bell tower but it was under construction so we couldn't go in...
The reason why the heading says and bottle of beer is because it appears that the Italians love it! I don't know why or if it's just where I am staying but I had this preconceived notion that they would always be drinking and cooking with wine but so far they have done neither, which surprised me a bit....but it's quite cool because in all these little villages where we go, they always have a little shop with tables outside where people go for, I guess you could call the sundowners(?), and have a beer...i like it, I think it feels homely and gives that sense of community :)
After Toffia, we went to rent another movie (500 days of summer) which I also like, and Sara, Marco, Matteo and I watched it before bed...
Well that was it, yesterday was nice, I started to feel a bit more settled :)
I will write about Rome today too...
- Caity xx
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