Overnight, we travelled across the Ligurian Sea then entered the Tyrrhenian Sea, travelling parallel to the Italian mainland on to the Port of Citavecchia outside of Rome. As we'll be spending a week in Rome at the end of our trip, decided to avoid the city tours and instead did a half day tour out to Tarquinia to visit an Etruscan necropolis dating from the 6th to the 2nd centuries B.C. - a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Over 6000 tombs have been discovered. For the most part, they are painted rooms which have been dug into stone then covered with soil, leaving a burial mound above ground. To help preserve the painting in the tombs, they are now sheltered by little buildings called "casettes". The 20 tombs open to the public can be viewed through a glass window at the bottom of stairs built inside the casettes.
Burial urns in the foreground (for those who couldn't afford a tomb), cassettes and burial mound in background.
Stairway down into a tomb.
We then went on to visit a family-owned olive farm called Casale Bonaparte - once owned by Napoleon's brother, Lucien, according to our guide. Olive trees take 5-6 years to start producing then continue to produce for hundreds of years. Some are still producing after 400 years. They gave us a brief explanation of the olive farming process then hosted a really nice buffet lunch they had prepared for us. All of the dishes served used olive oil they had produced servers accompanied by some local wine, including grappa (which I didn't try... Should have) .
farmhouse
Mom and dad took a tour out to Lake Bracciano, some 20 miles northwest of Rome and then visited a vineyard in Tuscia wine country for a wine tasting (because it would be SO different from what they could do at home in the Okanagan, hahaha). They really did enjoy it, though.
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