Day 25. By faith not by sight.

One of the world’s great views is afforded to the residents and visitors of the elevated Sicilian town of Taormina. Below is the rugged and yet beautiful Ionian Sea. In the distance is the mainland of Italy. Inland is the ferocious and tempestuous Mt Etna, a live volcano, towering more than 3000 metres above the town. We accept the wonder of this view by faith because today a cloud has literally descended on the town and the only sight we have is of a rather moody mist.

Even by faith Taormina is an interesting place. A surprisingly busy old town is bustling with locals and tourists. One of the largest Greek theatres in the world is still in use (in the summer).  While some streets do house the sort of tourist kitsch to be avoided at all costs, there are also many shops exhibiting local, traditional and hand made treasures. The city is busy with locals and families going about their business. Richard enjoys kicking a soccer ball in the Piazza with some local kids, while their mother worries that the ball might end up in a restaurant. As we wonder through the back streets on a leisurely afternoon walk we watch in amazement as a local man drops his daughter off for her dance class. The father accelerates down a steep, narrow, one-way street for about 400 meters …backwards… displaying incredible precision and speed.

Our accommodation is the only hostel in town. We have our own trendy little studio apartment- complete with an ensuite and kitchen. We meet a group of middle aged English tourists who are shocked that we are staying in a hostel, but at $75 AUD a night and with the manager Francesco giving us great advice about things to do and the best places to buy our food we are convinced by sight and not just faith that Taormina and its hostel are great options.

Day 24. Was that a ship or a sheep?

St Peter considered it a good place for stopover (legend has it) and Cicero described it as his favourite beach in the entire Roman Empire, so we thought Pizzo would make a good place to break our journey on the way to Sicily. We arrived at Pizzo to find the old city perched like a bird’s nest on top of the cliff overlooking the Tyrrhenian Sea with…wait for it…a white sandy beach. A rare thing in Italy.

Problem Number 1: our accommodation address did not appear to exist on our Navlady’s map, nor on the town map we found in the main square.

Problem Number 2: attempting to negotiate a narrow cobbled street in the old town. Fortunately an old man gave us the cutting your throat charade indicating we were actually going the wrong way up a one-way street.

Problem Number 3: trying to back out without hitting numerous pot plants, café tables or a huge white Mercedes 4WD.

Our first bit of good luck was showing the address of our accommodation to an ice-cream seller in the main Piazza. After a great deal of hand waving he indicated (Richard heard) that we needed  to drive down the hill as our B&B was near a restaurant built in the shape of a ship. Wendy, however believed the same conversation was indicating that the B&B was near a restaurant in the shape of a sheep. ‘Ship’ or ‘sheep’ sound very similar when chatting with a very enthusiastic man dressed in an ice cream jacket (S2s for Navy friends) with English about as good as our Italian. Getting down the hill was a challenge of significant driving dexterity and was only achieved, on a couple of tight spots, by folding in the mirrors to avoid contact with parked cars or brick walls.

Finally, we found our very funky B&B ($88 a night) which was right next to a restaurant called La Nave formed in the shape of a ship (not a sheep). Cicero was right, Pizzo is an unusual, timeworn but loveable Italian seaside city.

Of course, we went back to thank the ice-cream seller by purchasing two servings of the wicked local ice-cream delicacy – tartufo.

Day 23. Cone shaped tax havens.

After three weeks in Europe the inevitable happened…it rained! We have been incredibly blessed by great weather to date, so we try not to let a little drizzle slow us down…until it becomes a sodden gale.

We get up early and walk around Locorotondo as the town is beginning to stir and the Sunday church bells call people to worship. With its white limestone walls and smooth ivory-coloured stone streets we understand why Lonely Planet described Locorotondo as one of the prettiest towns in Italy. We are staying in a ‘diffused hotel’, a hotel with lots of rooms spread throughout the old city. Our room has stone walls, floor and ceiling and this along with the kitchen is typical of the stone buildings that make up the town. It comes with a stone balcony as a bonus.

The other unusual feature of this area are the gnome like Trulli homes, dry stone walled houses with cone-shaped stone roofs. In the day (700 years or so ago) the way to beat the land tax (actually a house tax) was to dismantle your dry stone hut when the taxman came to town, only to reassemble it again after he had left town. Some of the trulli are now used for shops, restaurants and accommodation but many are still family homes. These houses dot the rural landscape and are often surrounded by fields divided by beautiful dry stone walls.

The other big achievement of today is that Richard (using only Italian) successfully booked a table at a ristorante.  On a very wet, chilly night we are glad we had booked because we are the only people in the restaurant and we guess that they may not have bothered opening up had we not made the reservation. We feel a bit guilty, but the family is very friendly and sits down to eat their own meal as we are finishing ours. Needless to say the service is very quick (a five course degustation menu in less than ninety minutes) and the food is the best we have eaten in Italy.

Day 22. Saved by Pizza

Independent travel has many advantages, but things don’t always go exactly to plan. Today we planned to drive from the back of the knee of Italy (Abruzzo) to the top of the heel of the boot (Puglia). That should take 3-4 hours. If you look carefully at a map of Italy there is a section above the heel, that some refer to as the spur. This section includes a national park and some wonderful coastal vistas. So why not add that little section to our itinerary, we reasoned – it can’t be that far.

Unfortunately, it was a very slow and winding road for 200 km. It meant our 3-4 hours of driving became about 8 hours. We did see a couple of beautiful coastal cities (Peschici and Vieste) but Italy is not big on lookouts or picnic areas so there were not many opportunities to stop and take in the view.

Along the way we also saw some of Italy’s seedier side. Highway prostitutes flaunting their scantily clothed bodies at midday, on a road where cars are doing at least 110km/h, defies explanation and logic. Poker machines and their male patrons next to the grotty toilets in petrol station don’t make for a pleasant stop. Piles of garbage strewn along the beaches and visual pollution on a grand scale are not endearing.

We thought things had improved when, after winding around narrow roads for hours, our Navlady led us onto a different road. It looked wide and straight and we picked up a bit of speed until a road sign indicated that the road was narrowing. Suddenly we hit a section of unfinished road covered with a type of very coarse road base basically made up of huge rocks and boulders. Five kilometres driving over that type of surface could have easily penetrated our delicate French tyres. Finally we came to the end and another sign indicated that the road was closed. We proceeded hesitantly and unexpectedly found that this section of the road was actually finished. We traveled happily for the next 10kms until suddenly without warning the road turned into a virtual goat track. Eventually we returned to a reasonable road and were able to make some good progress towards our destination.

 

Despite the set backs and the long day in the car, the day was saved by two terrific pizzas when we arrived in Locorotondo. Richard had a white pizza – cheese, sausage and cabbage (no tomato). Bellisimo! Wendy had a bread pizza – base cooked then drizzled with local olive oil and sprinkled with salt before cherry tomatoes, slices of mozzarella cheese and basil added. Equisito

Day 21. 100 inches of snow

In the first couple of draft plans for this trip we intended to stay in the mountain village of Pescocostanzo. We changed our minds after we received an email from the hotel, which reminded us to carry snow chains. After a bit more research we realized that the town’s elevation was 1440 metres, so we abandoned the historic mountain town and decided to stay somewhere further down the slopes. Last week, when we were in Croatia, we saw a BBC World Service weather update reporting that Italy had received a huge amount of snow and a group of towns, including Pescocostanzo, had broken the existing record for the greatest amount of snow to fall in the shortest period of time. 100 inches (2.5 m) of snow had fallen in eighteen hours. We were relieved that we had decided to abandon the mountain village.

From the slopes of Abruzzo we bravely decided to go for a drive towards the mountains, in fact towards Pescocostanzo, to see how far we could get. With the sun out and the temperature a balmy 16 degrees we thought that we might get half way. To our enormous surprise we traveled on dry roads, periodically lined by snow, to a sunny and rather beautiful Pensocostanzo arriving at about 1.00pm.

Our only disappointment was that the town was almost deserted. Tourists had obviously read the weather reports and stayed away. Being 1pm the locals had all fled to their homes for their daily siesta. Every shop was closed and the only people we met were an academic couple from Oxford who were in town to do a bit of snowshoe walking. Although the roads were clear, the parks were piled with snow. We ate our prepacked lunch at the only dry seat we could find, across the road from a park covered in at least 60 cms of snow.

Driving back to Limiti we drove around the edge of the Majella National Park, on a rather precarious road. The road clung to the side of the mountain with a steep drop descending into the valley below. It was the type of road that made the Galston Gorge (north-west of Sydney) look like a four lane highway. Exhilarating, picturesque and slightly crazy. Not a bad description of Italy really!

Day 20. Grazie Silvia

Abruzzo is a region of Italy that came to our attention as a result of Silvia Collaca’s cooking show, Made in Italy, broadcast on SBS. Just a few hours drive west of Rome, Abruzzo is a popular holiday destination for Italians. It is an area of great contrasts. There is an alpine region famous for its ski slopes and hiking in the summer. To the east, on the Adriatic, there is a coastal area popular with beachgoers. We chose to stay on the slopes between the mountains and the coast in a tiny rural village called Limiti, near Palombaro, Cheiti, where the first buds of spring are evident. 

Surrounded by grapevines, olive groves and green fields, dotted with charming, crumbling, old stone villas and sitting beneath huge snowy mountains, the view from every window is amazing.

Exploring the region is a little complicated as a result of the heavy rain and snow that preceded our visit. In Australia, after rain, our country roads tend to turn into a series of potholes. In this region the roads actually subside, often closing half of the road or the whole road altogether. Driving on the wrong side of the road is made even more complicated when half the road has been washed down the slope.

 The fascinating old towns and cities tend to be perched high on top of ridges, slopes and mountains. The most unique is Pennapiedimonte. The town is built literally into the side of a huge mountain. Many of the dwellings are actually caves, which have been extended and converted into stone houses. There are quite a few for sale and apparently you can pick up a habitable two-bedroom cave/villa for as little as 17 000 Euro. The views are great but employment options, public transport and easy access to shops, schools and healthcare might be a bit of a challenge.

Breathing the clean rural air, greeting the friendly locals with our poor Italian and walking around the charming village laneways at dusk are some of the many joys of discovering Abruzzo. Grazie Silvia! 

Day 19. Only in Italy

As a couple we share many similar tastes, forged through three decades of marriage. One unusual one is that we generally drink tea and we don’t normally bother with coffee. We are not opposed to coffee…we just prefer tea. However, as a result of this visit to Italy we are reconsidering our relationship with coffee.

After doing some research, we are attempting to comply with some of the important rules of Italian coffee etiquette. We order our cappuccino in the morning, well before the clock strikes midday (to drink a coffee with milk after midday is considered inappropriate by Italians). We follow the local custom of having our coffee standing up at the bar, where it is much cheaper than if we sat down. We remember to pay only after we have finished our coffee. There are no paper cups with plastic lids, and certainly no calling out of your name. The barista simply serves the coffee, in a small china cup placed on a saucer. We do not specify a size, as there is only one size available. The cups are much smaller than at home – with only one shot of coffee and much less milk. The whole exercise is over in minutes, as the coffee temperature is warm so that you can drink it quickly, and be on your way. When you add in a cornetto, a small crescent shaped non-crumbly pastry filled with dark chocolate, morning tea (or should we say morning coffee) is an absolute delight.

The total cost of duo cappuccino and uno cornetto is less than 3 euro, which is about the same as one coffee and no pastry in Australia. So in Italy we do as the Italians do.

Next time someone at home questions our tea preference with the incredulous, ‘You don’t drink coffee?’, we will now reply, ‘We do drink coffee…but only in Italy’.