Tarquinia, Too

Let's travel back, shall we? On my last day in Italy, if you remember, we visited Tarquinia - but that was not all! I know, you were hoping that was it.  Sorry. I've got a few more things to report on. In Tarquinia, there's a famous necropolis, which we tried to check out. Unfortunately, it was a Monday and things are generally closed on Mondays in Italy. We saw what we could, and poked around and found an old aqueduct, too.

Here's one of the tombs we saw.

Matt got about this far before he stopped and hollered.

The chamber was swarming with fairly harmless looking but still disturbingly large black wing-ed insects. They were everywhere and Matt didn't want to risk getting any in his hair.

This was the inside, for those who are curious. All those black spots? Big icky bugs.

We had spotted an aqueduct from the road and went to check it out. It was neat to see one in person.

The top.

Looking out across the field.

Inspired by our near miss of the Etruscan necropolis in Tarquinia, Matt found another necropolis on the way to Rome to check out, the Necropolis of the Banditaccia. This place was really interesting with plenty to explore, even without the grand tombs that were closed. We got mobbed by cats and a guide dog when we got there.

Seriously, there were a serious number of cats.

There was a sunken road of sorts lined with tombs.

Our guide dog posed for a photo on top of this one.

Lots of them were flooded.

After walking down the road a while, we got into the nicer neighborhood of the larger tombs that seemed to be at least partially built out instead of just carved into the rock.

Here's the ceiling of one of those.

How about a short creature feature? There were some snails here and there, and a giant worm.

Hand for reference, click on the photo to see the whole thing.

Then there was this guy, lurking in front of one of the tombs.

And again! in front of one of the large, multi-chambered tombs that was closed.

Sometimes you just never know what you're going to run into in a burial ground.