Italy - Part I
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naples
As we disembarked off the ferry directly onto the busy streets of Naples, there was no doubt whatsoever as to which country we had arrived in. There were cars everywhere, bumper to bumper on the roads, vying with pedestrians on the pavements and parked just anywhere so long as at least part of the vehicle could squeeze in. That’s not to say that there weren’t plenty of Carabinieri around, their patrol cars were just adding to the mayhem as bonnets and roofs provided handy supports for coffee cups as the officers chatted and waved to everyone around them.
Welcome to mainland Italy, a country whose history has given us incestuous emperors, scheming popes, delusional dictators and some of the world’s most coveted art works. Surprisingly, Italy has only been a nation since 1861 but for centuries it has wielded powerful influence as Catholicism’s headquarters and set the modern era in motion with the Renaissance. Italy lays claim to numerous revolutionary inventions including the first clinical thermometer in 1612, the electric battery in 1800 and the world’s first practical wireless telegraphy transmitters and receivers in the mid 1890’s. It is also home to Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena, the world’s oldest surviving bank which has been counting coins since 1472.
naples traffic
With just 15 minutes to get to Samsung where I had booked in my tablet for a new screen, I left Ian and Bob at the entrance to the port and dashed through the busy streets. After collecting my ticket from the automatic dispenser and being called up to the counter, I handed over the tablet and waited to be told at what time it would be ready to collect. Taking one look, the service technician peeled off the cracked screen protector and, with just a hint of superiority, handed it back pronouncing it fixed!
In the 5 minutes that it had taken to resolve my issue, Ian had managed to navigate the centre of Naples and was now triple parked outside Samsung. Say what you like, but there is a lot to love about Italy and its casual approach to road rules. My phone then pinged with a message to say that the street food tour we had booked to fill in the time waiting to collect my tablet had been cancelled as the guide was off sick – hopefully not food poisoning - and so with nothing to hang around for we set off east towards the Adriatic coast.
There can’t be too many places in the world where you are travelling at 80 kph through a 40 kph zone with a convoy of cars behind hassling to get past, facilitating an exit out of Naples that was easily a personal best compared to other European cities visited to date. To cross the country from west to east (or east to west) one has to go over the Apennines Mountain range that runs almost the entire length of Italy, from Liguria in the north to the tip of Calabria in the south. Driving towards the mountains, it wasn’t long before we left the busy roads behind and entered a green and peaceful landscape. It was surprisingly quiet, with just the occasional small village, and in place of more traditional campsites, Park4Night was showing us agritourism sites where we could camp. This type of accommodation we had already come across in Sardinia, an original form of tourism in the countryside that has developed in Italy over the last thirty years. Its unique feature is that it can only be practiced on farms and by farmers, and in areas often struggling economically it has enabled a significant number of historic farm buildings and traditional agricultural practices to survive. Accommodation typically ranges from pitches to more resort style facilities and in many instances you can camp free provided you pay for a wine tasting, cellar dinner, cheese tour, horse ride etc. Being out of season and up in the mountains, it wasn’t unusual for us to be the only people parked up next to the goats although we did have one instance where we ended up in the middle of a music festival, thank goodness it turned out to be Reggae!
Italy is divided into 20 regions including Sicily and Sardinia, and despite the unification of the country, each region is unique and offers a different experience in terms of culture, landscapes, history, food and wine. The ‘Mezzogiorno’, southern area incorporates the heel of the boot (Puglia), instep (Basilicata) and toe (Calabria) and leaving the toe for the time being we were eager to explore areas long stereotyped as the poorer, more passionate cousins of Italy’s sophisticated northerners. We were also desperate to try out our new bikes and leaving Bob at a Masseria (a fortified farmhouse typical of 16th century Puglia estates), just outside the Adriatic town of Monopoli, we embarked on a 14-day cycle of Puglia and Basilicata.
polignano a mare
Initially heading north from Monopoli our route was designed to take us in a messy figure of eight covering the hills of the Valle d’Itria, the Murgia plateau and the coastlines of the Ionian and Adriatic Seas. For us, cycling seems to be the best way to discover an area and given that the extreme south of Italy is still relatively unvisited by international tourists our slow travel on bikes was perfect in an area renowned for its siesta loving, casual lifestyle.
alberobello
From the tiny old town of Polignano a Mare, which in recent years has hosted the Red Bull cliff diving competition, to Rutigliano and its famous Divella pasta factory, we progressed onto the beautiful white trulli town of Alberobello. Trulli first appeared in the mid 14th century and are found throughout the Itria Valley – where there are approximately 50,000 of these iconic cone-shaped limestone buildings. Some trulli stand alone, whilst others are clustered together and transformed into residences, shops, restaurants and boutique hotels. It is thought that they were initially built to serve as temporary field shelters for shepherds and animals and over time began to function as storage spaces for crops and farm equipment as well as permanent homes. What makes them remarkable is how well they’ve stood the test of time despite being built using mortarless construction, perhaps it is due to the decorative pinnacle placed on top of each dome to ward off bad luck.
As much as we were enjoying the cycling, some of the routes that we were being directed along by Gaia were turning out to be more ‘off-road’ than expected. Emerging from one particularly rough and overgrown section, Ian was a bit dismayed to see that he had a puncture and even more dismayed when I informed him that I had forgotten to pack the puncture repair kit. As a result, I was dispatched to the nearest bike shop some 7km away which was shortly due to close for siesta. Making it just in time, I purchased the necessary repair items but reluctant to cycle back I started to flag down vehicles that looked as if they were heading in Ian’s direction. Despite using a combination of Google translate and miming i.e. trying to push the inner tube and pump through partly wound-down windows, I was failing miserably, so it was a huge relief when Ian rang to say that two Swiss cyclists had repaired his tyre and he was on his way. Half an hour later, sat in a local café, we realised that the settings for Gaia were on hiking and not road biking. More than 3 year’s of constant GPS app use and we still can’t get it right!
Cisternino, another trulli town, is well known for its bombettes, little meat parcels filled with an assortment of ham, cheese and herbs which the butcher will cook for you while you wait; But the star of the show is without question pasta, the average Italian consuming around 23.5kg of pasta per year. Le orecchiette pasta (small ears) is synonymous with Puglia and we couldn’t really leave Martina Franca without learning how to make it. It follows a simple recipe using just the local durum wheat and water and we also learnt the importance of pairing the correct pasta shapes (Italy has around 350) with the correct sauces. As any discerning Italian will tell you, a rich ragu should always be paired with a flat, wide pasta such as tagliatelle which allows for the meat in the bolognese to cling to it more easily. Tag Bol anyone?
matera
Moving west we crossed into Basilicata, a small mountainous region that straddles both the Ionian and Tyrrhenian coasts. Inhabited since prehistoric times, the region is rich with the remains of the many cultures that have presided there which include the Greeks, Romans, Byzantines and Normans. The most significant of these is within the city of Matera, a World Heritage Site that is one of the oldest and continuous places of human settlement in the world. The Sassi area is a complex of some 1,500 cave dwellings carved into the rock flanking a steep ravine. The original natural caves were expanded into living spaces by peasants and artisans throughout the classical and medieval eras until it became known as “the shame of Italy” for its dismal poverty. In the 1950s the entire population of roughly 16,000 people (mostly peasants and farmers) were relocated leaving behind an empty shell. Move forward to the 1990s and giving a whole new meaning to the term “fixer-upper’, cave renovation began and today staying in one of the Sassi’s cave hotels is one of Europe’s more exotic new experiences. Trivia time – Sassi di Matera was one of the main location sites for James Bond in No Time to Die.
pane di laterza
Cycling an average of 60-80 km per day our thoughts were never too far away from food and back into Puglia we headed to Laterza, a gritty town far removed from the tourist highlights of the region. The attraction for us wasn’t the Gravina di Laterza, the largest canyon in Europe, but the Pane di Laterza, a traditional, tough crusted, sourdough bread with a soft, light centre, baked in ancient brick ovens.
Salento is the extremity of the Puglia region occupying the heel of the boot. Where the Valle d’Itria ends, Puglia becomes a long flat tongue of land between two seas, the Adriatic to the east and the Ionian to the west. The coastline on the western inside is a vast almost non-stop strip of sandy beaches and clear blue waters and compared to the popular coastline below Naples many of the seaside towns were relatively undeveloped. Taranto and Gallipoli are the main centres after which facilities are mostly provided by the frequent beach clubs where sun beds, umbrellas and champagne bearing waiters are all available for a fee.
puglia olive trees
The interior of this region plays a fundamental role in Italy’s agricultural economy, producing enormous quantities of olive oil and wine. En-route to an olive oil mill in the town of Manduria, we were saddened to see huge areas of dead and dying olive trees. In an area that is estimated to have 60 million olive trees, the arrival of a deadly bacteria from Costa Rica in 2013, has decimated approximately one third of them. Speaking with the family at the mill who have harvested their olive trees since the 18th century, it was hard to hear that the government is requiring trees, some of which are 1,000 years old, to be felled and destroyed. As this part of Italy produces 12% of the world’s olive oil and 40% of Italy’s olive oil, the situation is devastating and, unsurprisingly, many olive farmers have so far resisted orders to fell their trees. The situation now is that within the last 18 months new shoots have started to appear around the base of the seemingly dead trees and it is now a waiting game to see whether the new growth will succumb to the bacteria and also what further government orders will be made in attempts to stop the bacteria spreading north.
porto cesaro
In contrast to the soft sandy beaches along the inside of the boot, the Adriatic coast is much more rocky and rugged and feels far removed from the more popular parts of the region. We cycled along coastal roads with virtually no traffic right up until we reached the city of Lecce, dubbed the Florence of the south. Taking a much-needed day off, it felt wonderful to stretch our legs among the white stone buildings of the Baroque historic centre. There was no shortage of wine bars, gelaterias and patisseries which we made the most of before heading further up the coast and back towards Monopoli.
One thing about southern Italy, it is hot. Every single day of cycling we were exposed for hours in temperatures up in the 30s and by the last day we just wanted to finish, get back in Bob and head north. So, it was more than a little frustrating when just 15km out of Monopoli the police closed the road just as we approached explaining that the area was being shut down and we had to go back. With much moaning we devised another longer route only for the same thing to happen again. For 1½ hours we struggled to make progress. What was going on? Now we were asking the question, we noticed that there did seem to be rather a lot of police around plus a few helicopters overhead. Eventually, opting to cycle on the motorway slip road, we were passed by a convoy of shiny, black, people carriers with police escorts travelling at top speed. A couple of kilometres further on, another identical convoy shot past, each car with a large number sticker in the back window. Even if they hadn’t been travelling so fast, all the cars had blacked-out windows so impossible to get a look inside. We eventually arrived at our destination, hot, sweaty and totally fed-up to find that we had arrived into town with Biden and Macron who were attending the G7 Summit!
A quick update on our financials - After 4 months of communication and official complaints (our end), HSBC Au have at last managed to refund our account in lieu of the fraudulent transactions that were processed without our authorisation. There is just one transaction for $600 that, for some reason, has not been re-credited. But, there is hope, as following yet another complaint (again from us) we have been advised that the matter is being looked into and we should hear back within the next 60 days??