My never-expanding palate in the far south of Italy

We’re wrapping up our Road Scholar tour down in Catanzaro. We’ve got one more day and then I’m back in charge, shepherding us home via a complicated route that seemed like a great idea back in November.

The benefit of the tour is definitely all of the fun stops we get to make. We took a long ride to Reggio Calabria the other day. It sits across the Strait of Messina from Sicily and is one of the biggest towns we’ve seen down here – 183,000 people. It’s famous for these bronze statues of naked Greek warriors. They are from about 450 BC – so these things are 2500 years old! They’re called the Riace Bronzes.

They were discovered in 1972 by a tourist from Rome who was scuba diving off the Calabrian coast. Here they are, both well over 6 feet tall, with Ron seriously mesmerized. We had to do a 3-minute air lock chamber before we got to enter:

After we saw the Riace Bronzes, we were turned loose in Reggio Calabria to look for some lunch. Random restaurant stops rarely go well for me. We made our first stop in this Burger King. It’s been set up in a converted theatre and there were about 300 teenagers in there trying to order/pay + Ron and I. I tried to order but was worried about the crowds at the cash register- this after waiting at least 30 minutes for food at a way less crowded Burger King in Barcelona – and so we moved on.

As we strolled, Ron pleading with me to pick a restaurant, and me, rejecting them (too crowded, too hot, too much fish) we got to enjoy the sites of the pedestrian center of the city, including a series of non-functional escalators that stretched up the hillside:

Finally – after Ron threatened to leave me in Reggio Calabria – I agreed to eat at a restaurant that met my exacting requirements: it was empty and I could point at the food I wanted to order. This discriminating dining method ensured that we were served heated up frozen pizza slices from a “restaurant” that didn’t have any visible kitchen equipment, unless you count the napkin dispenser and the garbage can. The sole employee was so happy to see us that she kept giving us free – and equally inedible food – soggy rice balls and pizza samples with ham.

From Reggio Calabria, our bus made a quick stop in the fishing village of Scilla. No real sites here at all, but it’s lovely:

I’ll leave you with this picture from our hotel room here in Catanzaro, looking out over the Ionian Sea. We’re booked in here with a medical supply convention so there’s a lot of fun displays in the lobby. I’m no Italian gastroenterologist, but I’m seeing a lot of digestion and suctioning apparatus, which always adds to the ambiance of any hotel lobby:

And then I guess I’ll add this pictorial confession from last night, which was the follow-up meal to the kitchen-less pizza stop for lunch. If Ron is forced to eat fast food in Italy, at least we’re with a hotel full of GI specialists: