It was a dark and stormy night...

A couple of pictures of Metaponto; Greek ruin on the coast

Saturday, November 29, 2008

Ciao!

Got up to a very overcast and drizzly kind of day. Went down for breakfast – OK; not terrible and not great. Then out we went, following the coastline to the west, to the ruins of Metapontum (Greek colony, 7th century BC), near the present-day town of Mentaponto. To be honest, they are doing a tremendous amount of road construction – and we weren’t able to get to the best temple site! (And I will say that we tried … we were on roads/alleys/driveways yesterday that NO American has probably been on since WWII!) Did find the town, though, and some of the ruins. Cold, windy, blustery day—and the creature known as “the masked bandit” made her appearance again! (She originally appeared years ago in Europe, whenever we traveled in the “off” season – covered up thoroughly by scarves, hat, gloves so that you couldn’t tell who she was! Hmmm…I wonder!) After we trudged through the fields, we headed to the museum – and a great find it was! To say that we were the only visitors is perhaps an understatement – suffice it to say that the nice folks had to go ahead of us to turn on the lights so we could see the exhibits! And wonderful they were – but NO pictures! BUMMER! Lots of finds from the immediate area, which had been settled by Athenians before the Romans moved in. Some really lovely pottery and jewelry.

From there we headed back inland to Altamura, a town we had by-passed on the way to Matera. A prehistoric human skeleton had been discovered there in the late 1990’s, which has actually been made a part of the cave, as it is being covered by calcite. Scientists surmise that the poor fellow had been exploring in the cave, and had gotten stuck trying to go from one cavern to another, and had died of starvation! At any rate, there has been a divergence of opinion as to whether he should be left in situ or taken out – and now we understand they’re going to do some carbon dating to find out how old he actually is. The cave where Altamura Man is closed to the public, but the museum had a very good exhibit about him, including photographs. They had other exhibits as well, of finds in the area. Not as good as Metaponto, and again, we had to have someone go before us and turn on the lights! Definitely this is the time to visit, if you want to be the only one in town!

We were now getting a bit peckish, so headed back toward Taranto, stopping at the Carrefore outside Matera for lunch. Found the local pizza place – always a lesson to figure out how to get food! Here, one makes ones way to the cashier, tells them what they want (or points, in our case!), pays, gets a receipt and then hopes for the best! Actually, with receipt in hand, you then have to fight your way to the front of yet another scrum, to get your food. In this case, believe it or not, we managed to order ourselves pizza WITH French fries and drinks (beer and softdrinks; same price!) Got our food and took it to a table – YUMMY! GREAT pizza! AND great fries! (Also got some ketsup; very unusual, made by Kraft in Italy, but it had Worchester sauce included! Tasted like my brisket recipe! R loved it!)

From there, found the “back way” into Taranto – actually through the bus station terminus! By this time it was really raining – but that was NOTHING to what was to come!

It was by now 4 o’clock, and R had a couple of hours work to do for Caltech, so we settled in – me watching actual US football (TX – TX A&M followed by Pitt vs. WVA) LIVE on something called NASN—which is really ESPN! VERY enjoyable! So, while we may not have had any turkey for Thanksgiving, I did get some football games!

And then it started to POUR. And I mean POUR! So much so that we decided to go downstairs again for dinner. And again, really flummoxed the poor waiter! I went with bresaola again for starters, but not sure what R said – he got BOTH a dish of clams AND a plate of mussels, this time baked! I helped him with the mussels, and they were GREAT! For mains, we both had pasta – and this time we were VERY clear about wanting TOMATO sauce. Just excellent; amazing tomatoes here!

Back upstairs, we were able to watch the end of the Pitt-WVA football game, even though the satellite lost reception a couple of times. And then, with the wind whipping around and the waves coming up over the piers, the electricity went out in the hotel! (Fortunately, the football game was over…) Decided as it was 10, to just go to bed, which we did. (Hotel very conveniently has emergency lights both in our downstairs and upstairs area, so obviously they’ve danced this little dance before!) Somewhere around 11:15 the power came back on, which fortunately turned out the emergency lights!!

Up around 7, packed and ready to go. Off via the last stretch of the Appian Way to Brindisi, and the terminus of the road – from there it would be off to the middle east via boat! MUCH nicer today – blue sky and some sunshine even! Where did that storm disappear to??

More later!
Love,
m