Traveling Johns

In the morning we packed and said goodbye to Orlando and all the wonderful people at the Castello di Monterado. His grandmother is a painter and one of the rooms in the castle his her studio. 

Orlando also showed us the family chapel. The bishop will not allow Mass or even weddings to be celebrated there, so they keep it as a historic place.

Our first stop of the day was about two hours away in Padua — or Padova as the Italians say it. I had always wanted to see the Scrovegni chapel there. This simple little family chapel is generally seen as the beginning of Renaissance art. It also has a great story. Reginaldo Scrovegni was a money lender at a time when the church prohibited charging interest. Dante consigned the poor man to one of the lower circles of hell. When he died, the church refused to bury him. So his son Enrico build this chapel to both bury his father and to make up for the dubious family fortune by creating a beautiful space. He commissioned Giotto to decorate it with frescos. The paintings generally are done in that rather flat medieval style. 

But when you look closely, particularly at the faces, you can see something new is happening. There is more attention to real human emotion. The figures in the art seem to be interacting with each other. Look at this scene from the Garden of Gethsemane where Judas is about to betray Jesus with a kiss. Jesus and Judas are looking at each other in a way that would never happen in older Christian art. They are recognizably human. 

Giotto also pays close attention to fabrics and to light and shadow, all hallmarks of Renaissance art. 

Of course, he also preserves some of the best medieval elements. We loved the devils from the last judgement scene. 

Just because it was nearby, we also stopped at the Saint Anthony Basilica. This was and is one of the most popular pilgrimage sites in Italy. On the outside, the building is a jumble of different styles. 

It does not get much better inside, but there are some amazing parts to it. This is the tomb of Saint Anthony, and people were lined up to touch his sarcophagus and to kneel and pray there. Pictures were strictly forbidden, so we had to pretend to be checking our audio guides on our phones to snap anything. 

We drove about another 30 minutes into Venice. It was not altogether easy finding the drop off for the car. We knew that it was at the Mestre train station on the mainland. I finally went into the station to ask somebody. I hope none of you reading this ever has to spend time in that station. I have been in much nice second-class bus terminals in Mexico. I did finally learn where the car drop off point was, and with the help of the GPS we made it there. Neither of us were particularly sad to let the car go. A pleasant man at the Maggiore office there agreed to take us into Venice for 30€, about what the guide books had told us was the going rate. Driving from the mainland across the causeway into the cargo dock area is not the most romantic way to come into the city, but it work. We were met at the there by somebody from the hotel who walked us about 200 meters to our accommodations. 

John found the Locanda Avogaria hotel online. And, I will admit, it looked interesting on a computer screen. Once we were there, he still rather liked it. I have never so detested a place we have stayed in my life. (Well, yes, there was a place in Montreal where I spent a night when I young. Let’s just say that the plumbing didn’t work in the bathroom. That was even worse that this, but at least it was cheap.) John loved the bedroom decor with heavy dark brocade on the walls and matching drapes. I found it pretentious and oppressive. 

He adored the faux Renaissance ceiling. I thought that LED lights on a wire was a particularly stupid touch. 

There was a small attached sitting room. The wainscoting on the wall had this bizarre pattern, and the window treatment – at least to me – looked like it was supposed to be over the throne in some cheesy Hollywood movie. John like it a lot. The string you see on the ceiling connects a chandelier on the right to an electric plug on the ceiling. I guess exposed wires on the ceiling is just tres façonable. As you can guess, I thought it was stupid. 

I didn’t take much to get me to leave the apartment and start walking around Venice. The city is extraordinarily beautiful, at least from a distance. Up close you notice the dirt and the centuries of deterioration a little more. We managed, somehow, to arrive at the campanile when there was almost no line at all. The views from the top are stunning. 

And so are most of the view you seeing just walking around.

What is harder to capture in photographs is the oppressiveness of the throngs of tourists. Walking through Saint Mark’s Square in the late afternoon is like being on a New York subway at rush hour. There were many Americans, of course, but also quite a few Brazilians, who manage to be even louder and more obnoxious than the Americans. The Japanese were there in large travel groups. We did find this Chinese couple, accompanied by a herd of photographers, obviously here for a spare-no-expense honeymoon. Such is life under communism these days, I guess. 

We went back to the hotel and napped for a bit. We went out later in the evening for a pizza and a salad at a nearby square. Everybody was watching the World Cup, and this time they were cheering for the Americans over the Belgians. 

Sometimes when you are traveling you have to admit that as much as you want to, you cannot see everything. You have to make choices. We both wanted to go to Urbino, the most historically significant town in The Marches, but we also wanted to see Ravenna, home to be oldest and best preserved Byzantine mosaics in the world. Urbino sounded fascinating in the guidebooks. But I had heard about Ravenna ever since I was a sophomore at the University of Michigan taking art history. John and I talked it over, and 1500 hundred year old mosaics won. After having a lovely breakfast at the Castello di Monterado, we took the car and drove 90 minutes north to Ravenna. We found a place to park near the train station, and following the suggestion in one of our guidebooks we rented two bicycles there. We first looked at Ravenna’s historic piazza. It may have been 600 hundred years old, but it was not that fascinating. We went off in search of much older stuff. 

Our first stop was the Arian baptistry.  Now, I will not get into too much detail about theological matters, but the Arians were people who more or less believed that Jesus was something just a little less than completely divine. The whole business in the Nicene Creed about “begotten not made” is a response to Arianism. But even after most of Christendom had rejected Arianism in the fourth century, the barbarian invaders who overran Italy embraced it, particularly Theodoric, the king of the Goths. This was the baptistry of his fifth century church at Ravenna. Although most Arian art was later destroyed or just allowed to deteriorate, this one, for some reason, was preserved. Notice a couple things. First, Jesus is so totally naked that you can see his privates. That was never in my Sunday School materials. Second, notice the really buff guy on the left? He is the personification of the River Jordan depicted more or less as any pagan god might be in antiquity. 

We went next to look at a baptistry mosaic in the Church of San Francesco. But just as we arrived, siesta began and it would be closed for the next four hours or so. We biked on. Just around the corner we found the tomb of Dante Alighieri. There was a large group of German teenagers there, and I am confident that the poet would have assigned all of them to hell. When they cleared out, I snapped a quick picture of John. 

Right around the corner was a large mound covered with ivy. The interpretive material told us that during World War II the Italians had hid Dante’s body there — to protect him from the Germans! Maybe they should try that again. 

The most important site in Ravenna is the Church of San Vitale. It was built by the Emperor Justinian after he defeated the Goths and annexed Ravenna to the Byzantine empire in 540. This was the period of Ravenna’s greatest splendor. Notice the octagonal design. San Vitale does not look like much on the outside. Probably the brick was once covered with plater and painted brightly. 

But inside is where it really comes alive. These are the largest of Ravenna’s mosaics. Look at the image in the apse below. This is the traditional Byzantine image of Christ as Pantocrator or “All Ruling”. Notice that Jesus is depicted much as a young Roman nobleman. As was typical of the Romans, he has no beard. 

 Flanking the imperial Jesus on his right is the Emperor Justinian. 

Facing Justinian is the Empress Theodora. A former actress and courtesan — that is the kindest description — Theodora became one of the most powerful and sometimes despised women in antiquity. 

There are also biblical scenes. Here we have Jeremiah on the right and Moses on the left. Under the angels are two key scenes in the life of Abraham:  on the left and in the middle is the visit by the three young men to Abraham at the oak of Mamre, and on the right is the binding of Isaac. 

The images in the arch above the altar depict Jesus and the twelve apostles. These are were done about 20 years after the others, and frankly they not quite as good. But in this later mosaic Jesus sports a beard. This marks the beginning of medieval Christian iconography. 

I noticed the labyrinth on the floor in front of the altar. This is a shockingly new addition to the church dating from about 1500. 

Near San Vitale is the tomb of Galla Placidia (386-452), sister of the Roman emperor Honorius. I am not quite sure why they call it her tomb because she is not buried here, and never was buried here. Nevertheless, it is a small but stunning mausoleum. The ceiling, featuring a golden cross and stars on a field of azure, is the most famous part of the tomb. I did not particularly interest John or me. We did like the image of Saint Laurence shown below. He was martyred by being roasted over a slow fire. At one point in his torture he is supposed to have joked, “I’m done on this side. You can turn me over.” 

 Also impressive is the depiction of Christ the Good Shepherd. Images of the crucified Jesus are medieval:  the most common early depiction of Jesus is as shepherd. 

We went on our bikes across town where we saw baptistry. This one was done by the Orthodox, that is, those who agreed with the Nicene Creed. I could not see a whole lot of difference between this and the Arian baptistry, but apparently there are subtle but important differences in the imagery. 

Our final stop was the church of Sant’Apollinare Nuovo. It was built between 493 and 500. Most tours of churches in Italy begin with the words, “This church is in the shape of a Latin cross.” John was happy to discover that this one is not. It has the classic Roman basilica form of a long colonnaded hall with a semi-circular apse at one end. 

Apparently the Pope told Charlemagne he could take whatever he liked from this church and he walked off with just about everything he could. Only the mosaics were left behind. I loved this depiction of the three wise men. Notice that they are wearing pants. Persians, or Pathians as the Romans called them, were just about the only people in antiquity to wear pants. The Romans thought pants were really weird and frankly sort of unmanly. 

After a few hours we had seen enough and decided to get back on the motorway and return to Monterado. We love our palazzo! John went straight for the pool. 

After spending a couple happy hours at the pool (which had a great wifi signal, so I was happy), we dressed and walked once again around our castle. 

We went back to restaurant where we had eaten the previous evening. On a Monday night only a fraction of Sunday’s crowd was there. But the food was still great. On the advice of a German couple, we ordered the tiramasu for dessert. It was amazing, and very different from the usual glop that passes for this dish in the United States. 

Tomorrow we will start out trip to Venice. 

We woke up in our little bed and breakfast – and discovered another car in the parking lot! Apparently we were not the only guests, though we had no idea when the other people had arrived. The other couple were Italian, and I have never noticed them doing anything quietly, particularly at night. 

We had the usual Italian breakfast. I like almost all of the pastries, and the espresso is good as long as I can put some milk in it. But offerings like strawberry yoghurt with Coco Puffs for a topping — I’ll never figure that one out. 

After we packed up our first stop was Ascoli Picena. It has a charming Renaissance square. 

There was not much of interest in the churches there, and it was hard to visit them because it was a Sunday and people were actually using them for prayer. We were particularly disappointed that we could not see the cross in the Chiesa di San Francesco that supposedly has bled twice! We went to the local museum instead. The collection was not large, thigh it had a few decent pieces, particularly from the fifteenth century.

The prize piece of the collection, a stunning embroidered papal cope, turned out to be out of loan to one of the museums in Milan. After having an overpriced espresso and some gelato on the Piazza del Populo, we returned to the car and started north again.

On our way, John insisted that I stop the car so he could photograph the endless fields of sunflowers.

Our destination today is less a town than a hotel. Researching The Marches, John read about the Castello di Monterado, a grand palazzo in the Italian countryside. Here is the history of the place from the hotel website:

The castle building rises above the perimeter walls of an ancient parish church from the year one thousand, belonging to the monks of the Fonte Avellana hermitage.

Once owned by the Duke of Urbino, it passed on to the College of the Jesuit Fathers, to whom the present shape of the palace is owed, built in the early 1700’s to the designs of the architect Luigi Vanvitelli. Preserved from the period are the Jesuit style chapel, the immense cellars, some of the monastic cells and the crest of Pope Gregory XIII over the entrance door.

During Napoleonic occupation, the Castle and lands became an appanage of the viceroy of Italy, son of Giuseppina Beauharnais wife of the emperor Napoleon Bonaparte, Prince Eugène, who remained in possession of it even after the Congress of Vienna.

In 1824, it was inherited by his son Maximilian who, charmed by the place, turned it into a princely residence, having the nobility floor decorated with mythological frescoes, nearly all of which are preserved.

In 1846 the assets were acquired by the Papal State and then sold. Monterado was acquired by Count Cerasi, who arranged the park as it is still today. During World War II, the building was bombed and occupied by both of the warring parties.

The present owners have seen to careful restoration and reinstatement of the structure.

And all of this for a whole lot less than the Best Western in Rome. He had to book it.

We found it without much difficulty. The house dominates a hillside.

And the entrance, on a bridge above what must have once been a moat, is certainly impressive.

Our room is really a suite. There is a sitting room, a bathroom, a bedroom, and large balcony. Any one of these rooms, including the bathroom, is bigger than most of our accommodations so far. And who can complain about this panorama from your bedroom window?

The bedroom has an antique ceramic stove. 

And when you lie in bed, you look up at this marvelous trompe l’oeil ceiling.

Orlando, the home’s owner, offered us a choice of suites. John picked this one because of the balcony. It has one unusual feature – the now unused servants stairway would have once opened into the bathroom. The door has been replaced with a piece of glass. 

Nevertheless, when you are lying nakied in the tub, it is a little unnerving to be looking at a staircase. And, as John points out, the has all that beautiful Italian plumbing — so you are never quite sure how to turn the water off or on!

Guests are free to use any of the public rooms like this drawing room

or the library. 

There is a large pool. From the knoll on which the pool sits you can see the Adriatic about 20 miles away. 

But our favorite place in the castle is still our balcony. We pulled out two big armchairs from the sitting room and we still had enough space to park a Honda Civic.

In the evening we had to tear ourselves away from our roost to go get some dinner. The local taverna was crowded with people, all locals, mostly families, having those long Italian dinners. There were so many people they had to set up a separate tent to accommodate everybody. 

We woke up this to discover that our neighborhood had been invaded. Villetta Barrea calls itself the “borgo di cervi” or “town of deer.” These animals have free reign of the town and each morning they come down to check things out and perhaps have a bit of somebody’s flowers to eat. 

They showed no fear whatsoever of John. In fact, I think this one was posing for a picture. 

And this doe was insistent that she wanted the cookies in John’s pocket. 

We had been told the previous day that our fellow hikers were two women from The Netherlands. They were staying in our hotel, and we met them at breakfast. Their names were Diana and Sybil. We learned that they were both born and raised in East Germany when it was still under Soviet domination. After university they both had moved to Holland and married Dutch men. After the usual Italian breakfast, we all went to the park office, paid our tour fee, and set off with Emmanuel, our guide, and Laura, his friend.

Diana is just to my left and Laura, just to my right. Sybil is the one in the pink shirt and Emmanuel, not surprisingly, is wearing his uniform. Our goal was to hike to the top of Mount Amaro. This is not the tallest peak in the Apennines, but it is perhaps the most accessible to hikers, and at 2793 meters – a little over 9000 feet – it is a relatively high peak for Italy. 

It started out quite easy. But it quickly became and relatively steep ascent, and before long we were scrambling over rocks when we passed the tree line. About this point, I was tempted to say, “I think I’ll meet you all on your way downhill.” But I kept going, and so did John.

We saw some interesting things along the way. The park is a refuge for two critically endangered species, the Marsican Bear and the Abruzzo Chamois. We did not see any of the bear, but we did have a chance, from a distance, to observe the chamois.

We also saw some tiny but stunningly beautiful alpine flowers

and butterflies. 

We finally made it to the top – 9,163 feet!

As we ate our lunch, we admired the panoramic vista

and the view of Villetta Barrea and Barrea.

Going downhill was actually harder for most of us. The Apennine Mountains are basically limestone, and most of the path of the mountain was marked by broken limestone. This made going down quite tough because you were never sure if you had a good foothold or not on the gravel. 

We made it down hill and back to the park office by about four o’clock. John and I would have loved to rest, but we knew we had about three hours of driving ahead of us to make it up the the town of Ascoli Picena in The Marches. So, we just put our stuff in the car and took off. We found our bed and breakfast without too much difficulty. 

Unfortunately, there was nobody there. We did have our phones, and I called the number. A man promised he would be there in about ten minutes. While we waited, we looked around. The building looked like it was old, but have been completely renovated in the past few months. It was at the end of a street in a tiny village about five kilometers outside of Ascoli Picena. One one side of the house was a newly planted grove of some kind of fruit tree; on the other side was the town cemetery. 

At least you know the neighbors will not be keeping you up at night!

Bruno arrived and showed us our room. As far as we can figure out, we are the only guests here. There is a pool in the back, and our smallish room opens up to the pool. Bruno told us that the only restaurant that would be open tonight in the area was in the medieval section of the village across the street. We unpacked, and as the sun began to set we went over to the old town. It was quite small, but beautifully restored. 

The restaurant had a weird kitschy feel. It was in a fourteenth century building, but it still seemed sort of fake at the same time. But the service was friendly and the food was decent enough. They actually had salad and we devoured the leafy greens along with our pizza. 

We came back, exhausted from our travels, but happy. 

We arose early in the morning today to savor the beautify of our surroundings. John sat by the pool as the day started, watching shadow turn to light, listening to the soft sounds of birds and farmers in Puglia.

But much as we might have wanted to stay at the lovely Fontana Vecchia, we had a long drive ahead of us. We are heading north, ultimately headed towards Venice and Milan, but on the way we are exploring Abruzzo and The Marches. Tonight we are going to stay in a small town in the mountains adjacent to Abruzzo National Park.

The drive was not an easy one. The GPS has not been completely helpful in Italy. Here is Puglia it tends to send us down tiny, unpaved country lanes, barely big enough for one car, impossible for two. We found our way to the autostrade, Italy’s high speed toll road system, easily enough. We drove for three generally boring hours on something that vaguely resembled Highway 5. The trouble began when we left the autostrade for the secondary roads that would like us to our destination.

Yes, the road could not have been more closed. And apparently it was not well-marked in Italian either because we were not the only cars that came this far and had to turn back. We had no particular idea where we were or what we should do. John had the thoroughly brilliant idea of turning back to the nearest town and finding the nearest tourist information office. They would, he was sure, have maps of the area and be able to tell us what routes to take. So we stopped in the small city of Isernia, and sure enough, we found a tourist office there. A very helpful young woman who had studied English in Glasgow – fortunately she did not speak with a bit of completely unintelligible Clydeside accent – helped us out a bit. She did not have a good map, but we went over to a nearby square and talked to her father. He gave some quite useful directions. We also learned that our friend, shown in the picture below, in addition to running the tourist office, had created a summer learning program for young children in Isernia. Fridays were their beach days. 

We had a wonderful breakfast at the Palazzo dei Dondoli.

John was sure that one of the women running the hotel was really Tina Fey in disguise.

We packed up, and they called us a cab to take us to Alamo Car Rental. It was surprisingly not cheap for such a short ride, but I guess that I because they pick you up. The people at Maggiore, the car rental agency that handles Alamo and National in Lecce, were quite pleasant and spoke a bit of English. I set up our new GPS, with maps of Italy and Greece as well as North America, and soon enough we were off. Our plan for today was to explore some of the parts of Puglia north of Salento. 

Our first stop of the day was Locorotondo. This is supposedly one of the most beautiful towns in Italy, and is famed for its white buildings and paving stones. That was not our first impression of it. The newer part of the city has that drab, functional, concrete architecture that you find all over the developing world. My guess is that most of this went up in the 1950’s and 1960’s when southern Italy was much poorer than it is today. We did not want to deal with parking in the old part of the city with narrow alleys and one-way streets, so we parked about a kilometer away and walked in. 

The centro storico is indeed filled with white-washed buildings and flowers. It is pretty, but nothing special compared to many similar kinds of towns in Greece or Spain. 

We walked around for a bit, but as it was the midday siesta, absolutely NOTHING was open other than a few restaurants, and neither of us felt much like eating. The streets were deserted with only a few tourists like us wandering about. Apparently a couple of the churches are historically significant, but they were tightly locked as well. I guess nobody prays at midday, either. Just about the only street life we saw were two dogs. They seemed bored, too.

We pushed on towards Alberobello. We figured we would stop by our lodging first and get settled before we went into the town. It was not completely easy to find the Fontana Vecchia Bed and Breakfast. It is not located in town, but a few kilometers outside of Alberobello. I picked it because it features the trulli architecture traditional to this part of northern Puglia.  You can tell the trulli in the picture of the hotel below from the conical stone roofs. Looking at the picture, can you also figure why John immediately decided he liked this bed and breakfast?

Dozens of fruits trees are found on the property. John is very fond of cherries, and these were perfectly ripe and sweet.

Our hosts here are a really sweet couple. They have a small dog. He was not enjoying his bath. 

Trulli are not very big, even if they are cute. John discovered this the hard way.

After swimming a bit and napping by the pool, we decided to go into town. Here’s the proud driver with our rental car.

No, that really is not our car. They gave us a big Volvo because neither of us wanted to deal with driving a stick and figuring out the roads in a foreign country. The only automatic transmissions they have come in full size vehicles. Still this old Citröen is kind of cute.

The town center of Alberobello is a UNESCO site. There are two hillsides covered with trulli. Although they seem cute to us, the trulli were housing for the desperately poor. They had no electricity or running water and the sanitation was primitive at best. It is not surprising that the residents were eager to move into new apartments when they had the chance. 

But the unique architecture of the trulli made people understand that they were worth preserving. Some of these, like this one below, are still used as dwellings. They have been updated to include modern necessities including television. 

Far more have been converted to shops and restaurants.

There are flowers everywhere in this old part of town. 

We went into the slightly newer area across the street and had two cheap – and almost inedible – sandwiches. John found some of the people on the street interesting to watch. He thought this woman could be in a Fellini film.

Tomorrow we are off to the mountains of Abruzzo before heading in The Marches. 

We were up and ready to leave Gallipoli fairly early today. We knew that today, our last ride of the trip, would be a long one. We had breakfast on the rooftop terrace of the hotel. It was a pleasant stop to sit, and they had a lot of American coffee instead of espresso. I am all for eating the foods of other cultures, but mostly after ten o’clock in the morning. We packed up, said goodbye to our tiny room, and set off on the bikes.

The route leaving Gallipoli was not easy or pretty. We had to share roadways with trucks for several kilometers before we were out of town. Once we were in the countryside again, things were nicer. We saw the usual rows of stone pines trimmed to look like umbrellas.

We stopped at an old masseria – sort of a southern Italian version of a plantation – that had been taken over by some food processing operation. The gardens were open to the pubic, and we took a quick look around. This was the most humid day of our trip so far, and I am sure John wished the fountain were a pool!

Along the way we met some friendly shepherds with goats. The goats found the hay far more fascinating that the tourists on bikes.

Our only real stop of the trip was in the town of Nardo. This is the town square. It is a bit faded and shabby now, but you can tell that it was once pretty grand. 

Legend has it that the city was founded when a bull scratched the ground with his hoof, and a spring of water appeared. This gives the town both its emblem and motto of “Tauro non Bovi”, “A Bull, not an Ox”. In the 1930, Mussolini’s government built a fountain in the town square. After the war was over the town government had to have the fascist emblems discretely changed to something less offensive. 

The fountain still provides potable water to the town, though a better plumbing system means that the locals no longer have to come here each day to fill up pails and bottles. But it’s still fun. 

Right about this time, we noticed that our camera was missing. We started searching frantically for it and asking people. After we had become reconciled to losing it and were trying to be philosophical about it, we went back to our bikes. Our camera was hanging on the seat. Did we put it there somehow? Or did some kind person, figuring we had set it down in the wrong place, decide to return it to the clueless American tourists? We will never know. But we were happy to see it again! I’m holding the camera there like Perseus with Medusa’s head. 

We checked out the local cathedral where there were some nice frescos. John stopped in a handicrafts store where he was taken with these bells in the shape of a woman with a mustache and beard. The woman who ran the shop explained that supposedly in the old times the feudal lord had the privilege of sleeping with any woman on her wedding night before her husband did. One man, outraged by this practiced, dressed as his wife to save her honor. But in his hurry he did not bother to shave his facial hair, so the local prince had him executed. 

As an aside most historian doubt that droit du seigneur ever existed. But Voltaire, the Bill Maher of the eighteenth century, wrote about it to illustrate the horrors of the bad old days – and no doubt to help sell his book! And we found the salacious tale amusing enough, too. 

After chatting with the proprietors of the store, we jumped on our bikes and pedaled away from Nardo. We knew that by this time the hotel in Lecce would be closed for siesta, so John and I, once we were a few kilometers out of town, decided to have a siesta or our own among the olive trees. 

But after a half hour of rest or so, it was time to pedal the last few kilometers into town. Once again we were on busy roads and had to be vigilant. And soon we were back at our hotel, the Palazzo dei Dondoli. John was not sure if he was feeling triumph

or simply exhaustion!

The hotel was still closed for siesta, so we went into town for some overpriced gelato. We figured it would be open again around 4:30 and we were right. They put us in room 1 this time. It’s nice and big

and has a nice bathroom, even if we did have a little problem with the shower drain. 

In the evening, after we had napped and showered, we return to town for dinner at Blu Notte, highly recommended by Lonely Planet. We were not that impressed and found the food average and the service less than friendly, even by European standards. The passeggiata, the Italian evening stroll, was still going strong around ten o’clock when we left the restaurant. We stopped by the Cathedral square to admire the buildings lit up at night.

Tomorrow, we get our car and start driving north. 

We came to like our bed and breakfast a little better in the morning. Yesterday the room had seemed claustrophobic and we did not feel all the comfortable; this morning, at breakfast, we can to really like the family whose house we shared. The main part of the house has a several beautiful open air spaces. One was the terrace where we were offered a wonderful breakfast.

Yes, bring the laptop to breakfast is tacky, but the wifi signal was much stronger on the terrace. There are wonderful views of the city and the surrounding area from the rooftop.

We chatted last night and over breakfast this morning with Peter and Blanca, two travelers from the Czech Republic.

Soon enough, we were packed and off riding through olive groves again. It was a beautiful day.

Ugento is somewhat inland, but it did not take us long to ride down to the coast. John loves to ride along the beach, particularly on dedicated cycle paths like this one. 

We passed through a number of small towns. Most of these appeared to be summer homes for Italians. It was a weekday and not high season yet, so most of the houses were closed up tight and there were few people to be seen on the street. We did pass this house with Lady Liberty on the roof and sort of figured there was a story here….

Most of the coastline here is rocky, though the water is translucently blue. The few sandy beaches are pretty mobbed, even in the off-season. We stopped at one of them, Punta della Suina, to spend the afternoon. We walked through a pine grove to get to the beach. John instantly remembered a scene in Fellini’s Juliet of the Spirits where they walk through pine trees to get to the beach. I sometimes think we are on the Italian Neo-Realist film tour of the country. 

Like most Italian beaches we have seen, much of the beach is operated by a restaurant which rents out chairs and umbrellas. John immediately decided he had to get a spot on the island.

A chair and an umbrella on the island wasn’t cheap, but it avoided a the crowds and the disco music on the beach and we had a view of the water.

Not all Italians look like they just out of the pages of Vogue Italia. For some, the years of inactivity and linguini bolognese are starting to catch up with them. 

About four o’clock, we decided it was time to get on the bikes again and push on. We road along a fairly busy road for about six kilometers until we came to Gallipoli. Now, John, the film major, wants to make a couple things clear here. First, the massacre of all those Australians during World War I happened at the other Gallipoli, the one in Turkey. Second, the director of Gallipoli was Peter Weir and NOT Mel Gibson. 

As we rode into town, the new part of this Gallipoli reminded us a lot of Montevideo, Uruguay. Of course, we were careful NOT to say that because Uruguay was playing Italy in the World Cup tonight and we did not want people to think we were rooting for the wrong team. Not that we really know anything about soccer at all…. Our accommodation for the night was in the Hotel Baroni 33. This is obviously the hotel of choice for bike tour operators. A group of 8 Germans showed us on identical bikes just when we did. 

The hotel was nice enough, but the room was so tiny this time that a cat couldn’t have swung a dead rat. I think I am for fashionably small portions, but I am not so delighted by hotel rooms about as big a telephone booth. Of course, some of you have no idea what a telephone booth is. You are too young. Just Google it. 

We walked down the Corso Roma a few blocks and crossed a causeway into the old part of town. Gallipoli was originally basically an island and was protected by walls from attack. Some of the fortifications are still intact. 

We stepped into the cathedral where we admired the art. 

Others were there for reflection and we tried to be respectful of that. 

Well, as respectful as you can be when you are taking surreptitious pictures of people. We walked around looking for a cup of espresso afterwards, but Italians do not drink coffee in the early evening, so we were politely informed that the coffee machine was turned off and was going to stay that way. Did we want vino rosso? No, grazie. 

EVERYWHERE people we watching the the World Cup. I am sure that most of these people could have watched it at home, but they preferred to watch it together on the street. 

Maybe, like this young lad, they were all set for a victory for Italy.

Unfortunately, they were disappointed as Uruguay won 1-0. No joy in Mudville … or in Gallipoli. 

After our massive dinner the night before, we were looking for something light to eat. We walked up the shore of the new part of the city which is lined with food stalls and carts. 

John had a hamburger, and I had a spicy sausage panini. These came “complete”, meaning they had french fries in the sandwich. That was different. Well, John also likes to point out that the bread was great and the tomatoes were fresh. And they were only 4€ each. 

There was also little rides along with the food stands. I am sure this little fellow slept well after a fun day. 

Well, it is time for us to go to sleep, too. Tomorrow we return to Lecce and finish our bicycle adventure. 

John was up fairly early today, and while I packed things and worked on photos, he explored a little more of Leuca. There is a small beach here. The communities makes the most of it and whimsical sculptures help make it more memorable. Our hotel is in the background. 

During the latter part of the nineteenth century, Leuca became a place for the wealthy to come for cooler summer weather. They built enormous villas on the promenade. 

John liked this one with a Chinese theme.

Many of them, unfortunately, are not in great repair such as this Florentine mansion.

The Hotel Terminal had a pretty uninspiring breakfast, including possibly the worst crepes either of us had ever tried, but we met a charming couple from England there. They mentioned that the pool was their favorite part of the hotel. We were not even aware there was a pool, so John immediately had to check it out. It was lovely, and there was almost nobody there even though the day was already starting to get hot.

We would have loved to have spent a restful afternoon by the pool, but he had a full day of cycling ahead of us. So John mounted his spiffy new bicycle and off we went. There was a modest uphill climb out of Leuca, but he handed it easily with a full complement of gears. We stopped in a tiny village dominated by a medieval fortress.

We went on to another town where we saw the grocery truck. In southern Italy many villages are too small for a store, and not everyone can drive to the nearest city. So the grocery truck comes through and people come out to buy what they need. There were two trucks here. The one on the left was selling fruits and vegetable – you can see John in the background there – and the one on the right sold everything else.

In this same village they had apparently had some kind of festival the day before. We think this was part of a larger celebration for Saint John the Baptist. Although the first century prophet hardly seems like someone who would have approved of festivals and celebrations, his feast day on June 24 was used by the Catholic Church as a way to give existing pagan celebrations of mid-summer a vaguely Christian meaning. So, down deep, I think these people were really celebrating the summer solstice.

In another town, we stopped briefly to examine a twelfth century chapel. 

John was fascinated by the statue of Jesus in a glass coffin in the back. 

The really important thing here, however, was the ninth century tomb in the church yard. Nobody is sure exactly who was buried there, and it may even be older than they think. 

From here the route took us downhill – did I mention how much we like downhill? – to the beach. We stopped at a beach club for lunch. In much of Europe, the beaches are not particularly open or free. Local businesses such as hotels or restaurants own the beach and you have to pay them to use the beach. The system is not all bad. They keep the sand nice and clean and you generally get an umbrella and a couple of chairs provided. We had a pretty decent lunch, and as you can see, being close to the water keeps John happy.

After our meal, we paid for our umbrella and chairs and we spent a happy couple hours napping and swimming. The water is a little brisk, but not cold, and there are no waves. Edie would love it.

Around four in the afternoon, we finally decided we had to keep on going. Our destination was the town of Ugento, about 18 kilometers away. The road sent us up hill through some ugly trash-strewn fields for a couple hundred meters, but soon we were once again riding through olive groves and vineyards. In a small village, he had to stop for the train to pass. If you look on the other side of the rail guard you can see a man in a blue shirt. He was actually manually raising and lowering the crossing arms. 

In a short while we came to Ugento. This is not a tourist town. Ugento is the real southern Italy in the way that Red Bluff is the real northern California. And sometimes it is really interesting to see where ordinary people spend their lives. 

We were originally supposed to stay at a masseria, a farmhouse bed and breakfast, outside of Ugento. For some reason this was changed and we were put in the Porto Paradisio Bed and Breakfast here. This has been our biggest disappointment of the trip so far. It’s a classic European pensione complete with a scowling old proprietress. The rooms are clean, but so small you barely have room, as John said, to swing a dead cat. 

We walked around town endlessly before finding the recommended restaurant. The food was excellent, but we ordered way too much. You never are sure in Italy when you order the antipasto what will come. Sometimes you get a plate with a couple pieces of cheese and salami and some black olives. But here we had an enormous spread of a dozen dishes. And they were all excellent.

We were stuffed after this, but the primi and secundi courses had still not arrived yet. We’re never eating again. Or going anywhere near a scale. 

Complaining works! We sent an email to the tour operator in Glasgow as well as a text to the local tour operator. We heard right away that they would be here this morning with a new bike. And sure enough Francesco came by just before nine o’clock with a new bike. 

He explained that John would get an even better one either this evening or tomorrow morning, but that this one was the best they could do for today. 

We finished packing up, and set off along a road that reminded us both a great deal of the California coast. As you can see, the weather has been perfect since we started our ride.

We passed sixteenth century fortifications designed to repel the Saracens and the Turks. This is the Torre San Emiliano. Today in Italy that just suggests a fine artisanal cheese made in the area.  

This is supposed to be the longest and hardest ride of the trip with three gut-busting hills. After we made it through the first one, admittedly walking our bikes part of the way, we stopped at the small village of Porto Badisco. I immediately mispronounced it as “bad disco” and even though I have been corrected I refused to give up such a wonder mnemonic. There’s a great swimming inlet here. 

Lots of people from Otranto come here, particularly on a Sunday.

Our next stop was the town of San Cesare Terme. The mineral springs and mud baths here have attracted visitors ever since Roman times. But it really became most popular in the nineteenth century after rail lines and roads linked it easily to the rest of Italy. 

The big attraction for us was the Villa Stricci, a house built for the operator of the hot springs. 

Just on the other side of San Cesare Terme, the guide materials suggested we stop as some sea cave. We were not sure we were really interested in this, but we decided to cheek it out – anyway. 

Instead of going in the caves we took a boat ride to see some other caves nearby. Our fellow passengers were straight out of a Fellini movie.

And the lanky captain was straight out of El Greco!

The water in the caves was an eerie shade of blue.

Like the Amalfi coast further south, this part of the Salento coast line is marked by steep limestone cliffs. We not always traveling on the edge of the cliffs, but we were never far away. This was the first time, though, we had spent most of the day on a road with a significant amount of car traffic, so that left us a little on the edge in another way.

After 60 grueling kilometers and two more steep hills, we finally arrives at Santa Maria de Leuca, usually just called Leuca. There is a bit lighthouse here to let you know that you are coming to the southernmost tip of this part of Italy.

Right next to the lighthouse, on the right, almost hidden by other buildings, is a bell tower. This is part of the church of Santa Maria de Leuca and the town takes its name from this church. We probably should have stopped to look at it as it was an important pilgrimage church in the Middle Ages. Legend has it that this was where Saint Peter landed when he came to Italy, and that he celebrated the first Mass on the Italian peninsula near a temple to Minerva on this bluff. The Romans there were immediately converted, and from that time onward the pagan temple became a Christian church. Although the story is historically implausible, other than to being the kind of site where the Greeks, who first settled this area, might have build a temple to Athena, it did prompt tens of thousands of pilgrims to come to Leuca for centuries. But we did not make the pilgrimage because we had been riding on and off since morning and we were tired and ready for a shower and some supper. 

We arrived at the Hotel Terminal, right on the waterfront, and one of the team from Salento BiciTours, our local tour operator, was there with John’s final bike. This was Giulia, and she had a spiffy new bike with a large frame for John. 

The Hotel Terminal was probably built in the late sixties. The design is a bit dated, but it is in good condition and is obviously popular with Italian tourists and business travelers. There are some large meeting rooms on the first floor, and each of the rooms has a balcony with a view of the water. 

Nothing makes John happier than being able to look at the water. For me, the best part was taking the shower after that long day of riding.

We had dinner, courtesy of Salento BiciTours, at a wonderful little restaurant here called the Hosteria del Pardo.