I had just finished my midterms for the week and was so excited to start my week long fall break off from school. A friend of mine had asked me if I had wanted to go to the hot springs with her and I said yes right away.
Now, the problem was that we really had no idea how to get there, we only really knew what other students in our program had told us; we knew that we had to take bus number two and that it should take us to the hot springs.
We get down to the bus station and wait for our bus. After a couple of minutes we get on and as the bus leaves the station, all of us are unsure about what stop to get off at.
The bus makes its way around town and we see a sign for, “Terme”, so we just assume that this is the free hot spring that our friends had told us about. We get off at a bus stop that is outside of a day spa called, Terme dei Papi. As we walk up to the entrance of the spa, we all agree that we will try it out, even if it costs money. At the front desk, a nice woman told us that the spa had a manmade pool which had natural hot spring water flowing into it. It sounded nice but we wanted to go to the naturally formed hot spring we had seen in our friend’s pictures.
We had no idea how to get to said hot springs so we Googled it and the maps told us that it should only take 16 minutes by walking; what it didn’t tell us was that for these 16 minutes would be spent walking along a busy road. Single-file, we made our way down to the hot springs.
Coming up to the springs, one really can’t see much; there is a fence and what looks like a vacant lot on top of a hill. Being the adventurous young people we are, we decided to keep on going. As we walked over the top of the hill, we would see a tree and what looked like a small pond next to it. The closer we got to this pond, the stronger the smell of sulfur grew. We had finally arrived to the hot springs and were honestly a tad bit disappointed.
The water was lukewarm and was very murky because of the large amount of allege covering the sides and the bottom of the pond. After one brave friend went into the pool and I attempted to get in but was not impressed, we decided to go back to Terme dei Papi and what a great decision this was.
Once we arrived, we agreed that we would all get a package deal where you could have unlimited access to their hot spring pool and a 25 minutes massage for € 40.00. The pool was fantastic and we had a great time swimming around in the warm water. The massage was amazing but not long enough!
In the end, we didn’t go where we had initially had wanted to but what we ended up with was just amazing and definitely an experience I’m glad I shared with good friends.
Chi è Madeline Merlic: “Sono una studentessa californiana. Questo è il mio ultimo anno di università e ho deciso di venire a studiare a Viterbo prima di laurearmi in Giornalismo e Public Relations all’università di Chico a Maggio 2017. Mi piace viaggiare e documentare i miei viaggi con delle foto.”
Contatti:
Facebook: Maddy Merlic
Instagram: @madelinemer
Blog: madsblogabroad.wordpress.com
