Leaving my heart – and my camera – in Italy

We’re leaving Calabria and headed home. We had a nice farewell chat with our guide, Luca. He’s from Calabria and he deeply loves his home region. His summary helped me process and focus on a few things we saw on the trip. He says that Puglia – the first region we toured – was “discovered” about 20 years ago. Prior to that, Lecce, that first lovely city, was unsafe and gritty. He says that Calabria – with the cities of Reggio Calabria, Consenza, and Catanzaro – is on the cusp of being discovered by tourism like Puglia/Lecce and he went on to list dozens of castles, archeological sites, and remote mountain villages worth seeing.

Luca reminded us that no matter what we saw – the incredible Riace Bronze statutes, the 1500 year old codex – we were the only tourists present. He said – rightly – that if those sites were in Rome or Venice, we would be visiting them in massive throngs of tourists like at the Vatican or St. Mark’s square. So all of that is a huge vote in favor of checking Puglia and Calabria out.

We did our last little Calabria day trip to Santa Severina, pictured below. There’s only one tiny road in. We had to leave our little bus and take an even smaller bus.

Here’s Ron entering the 11th century castle at Santa Severina and a charming courtyard:

Santa Severina will remain etched in my mind forever as the place where I dropped our camera and it will now only take this colorful striped picture. If anyone thinks there is a way to salvage this thing, send me a message:)

I’m typing this on the train back up north. Our journey so far this morning has reminded me of how many things can go wrong when we travel on our own. Our cab driver this morning – from the hotel to the Catanzaro station – was visibly agitated by our attempts to put on a seatbelt. Finally, he showed Ron that his buckling efforts were never going to work out because the cabbie had simply cut out all the belts as they were a hindrance of some sort – he needed both arms and his torso completely unrestrained so that he could weave the cab around in the best possible fashion as he scrolled around on his phone and, further, he needed us unbuckled as well.

Once he dropped us off at the station, we found our train – leaving from Track 2. And so we waited. And then I heard the kind of announcement that makes me nervous in any foreign station because, right after the announcement, everyone in the station springs into action and moves with some urgency, and Ron and I never know what to do.

We followed everyone over to a train at Track 3 and got on. I found a conductor to confirm that the train was going to Lamezia Terme and so we sat down. Until the next announcement, when everyone got off the train and moved back to Track 2, where the electronic reader board listed a train to Lamezia Terme. So we started boarding that train and would have headed…somewhere in Italy…but a nice young woman stopped us and told us to go back…once again…to Track 3, where we boarded a train that definitely said Reggio Calabria, not Lamezia Terme. The obvious key…when will I ever learn… was to ignore the station signage, the conductors, and the sign on the train and just trust the other passengers.

I have one last travel stop to share. We got off our Naples-bound train in Salerno and had Aldo Limos pick us up for two quick stops. I wanted to see two villas that I had read about – both buried in the mud in AD 79 when Mount Vesuvius erupted. They are Villa di Poppea and Villa San Marco.

Below is Villa di Poppea as you approach. Construction started here in the 1st century BC and the scale of this place is crazy. There is a pool that is 200 feet long! Here is a website with a ton of info about these sites: http://www.the-silk-route.co.uk/italyRomanVillas.htm. Our Aldo Limos driver said very few people come see the villas. If you are in Naples, try to get there!

Here’s another approach picture (not mine):

Here’s the pool (not mine):

Inside, the walls are covered with richly-colored frescoes:

And then the hallways have this paint that I kept calling wallpaper but I’m not sure what it actually was:

And – last one – I promise, these gorgeous pristine floors! How can they be 2000 years old??

Both of these sites were absolutely empty and we walked around in awe that we were allowed to just stroll around these 2000 year old mansions alone. And it was quite a contrast to Naples, where we were just dropped off. Naples is nuts – the driving is outlaw/vigilante, there are swarms of people, horns honking constantly. Here’s the view from our final Italian hotel window:

Another awesome trip – but we’re excited to get home. For those of you who followed the epic shopping of our spring Spain trip, I am happy to report that our total purchase for the entire 4 weeks in Italy is one single sweatshirt, but of course I’ll be shelling out hundreds of dollars for a new Panasonic camera so I’m coming out behind, which should not surprise anyone:)

We’re US bound until April, when we head out on a big Germany trip. I’ll talk with you all then and leave you with our final Neapolitan pizza: