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.
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