The Uddstrom's European Adventure (2019): And so we have come to the end of our Italian Adventure...

Friday 14-Jun-2019 (Matera to Manfredonia)

As the ferry from Bari to Dubrovnik only sails every other day – we needed to “fill in a day” – given that we had decided not to visit Lecce – the number one place to visit in Puglia, another city with significant baroque architecture – but we have seen rather a lot of that already! So all that remained to do before departing Italy was a visit to Alberobello – known for its “Trulli” houses – then onto a nice camp site by a beach on the Gulf of Manfredonia (Adriatic) for some rest and hopefully sufficient WiFi to allow a Blogg update, given we had run out of data on our 2GB/month plans… oh, and to book a ticket for our passage to Dubrovnik.

But before departing Matera – we visited an overlook that was just a couple of kilometres up the road from our Campsite (Masseria Radogna). It turns out that the Campsite was on a high field on the opposite side of the Matera Gorge – so here are a few images to give you a sense of the extent of this area of habitation. There are other archaeological riches to be found here too… with evidence of Neolithic habitation – not 5 minute’s walk from our campsite. Our host at Masseria Radogna, who was genuinely helpful – did however express his disappointment with NZ… over the Luna Rossa!

Landscape view of Matera - from the other side of the Gorge (do click on it to enlarge)

And just to prove that I am part of this travel too – (please note, Sue, no socks).

Yes, I was there too.

These houses are built from the abundant limestone in the region, are double “skinned” and require no timber. From the inside the rooves look like igloos – while on the outside you have stacks of limestone “shingles”. The white markings on the rooves have various meanings… from Christian to very much Pagan! They seem to have appeared first in the 16^th Century – but the name “trulli” is said to be named after Roman round tombs.

Trulli houses in Alberobella

The cone shaped rooves...

What most people seem to do while on holiday - take photos of each other in front of / on / near … some place of interest. Various poses are important too. But mainly added here so you can see some of the symbols that appear on the rooves of the houses.

Even the local Church (The Church of St Anthony of Padua, and built in 1927) has a Trulli roof structure!

The fresco behind the alter (showing Christ as Pantocrator) is the first that we have seen, expressed in this way - simple but quite beautiful.

The campsite at Manfredonia was advertised to have a beautiful beach, and to be nice and shady (important in these locations where we have temperatures reaching upward of 38C during the day).

On the way there, north of Bari, we passed through Molfetta… where we came across a vast series of salt pans… extending about 20 km along the coast (and right into and behind the town of Molfetta). There were large numbers of flamingos wading in these shallow reservoirs. Apparently these are the oldest salt works in Italy… and go back as far as the 3^rd Century BC. We just thought “mosquitos”…

One last point of interest about this drive. Yes the roads were far from smooth (=noisy travel) – as we have come to expect – but we also came upon the town of Zapponeta – a town with perhaps 7 speed cameras within a distance of 2 km… on a long straight road – with a 50 km speed limit. After the fact… we discovered that the universal warning for speed cameras seems to be a flash of the lights! That said – I have no idea whether we have picked up any speed camera tickets in Italy. The speed limits, and local adherence to them is beyond mortal understanding. There are vast stretches of motorway style (divided highway) with a speed limit set at 50 km/h… but everyone is travelling at 100 km/h… then there are places where you are warned about the upcoming speed camera… and even whether it is active or not… and a sign indicating the speed limit (because it is often hard to know).. then there was Zapponeta!

As regards the pristine swimming at Camp Scalpi… it was sandy… but hard to see your feat once you were in water more than about a metre deep. The temperature – well it was like a tepid bath it was so warm… so not even particularly “refreshing”. But it did some relief from the heat. And yes we tested Fiat’s ability to repel mosquitos! Which went well until one had to open the door to go outside – even if ever so briefly.

Worked on the Blogg… and the directferries.co.uk website to try and make a booking for tomorrow. A frustrating exercise given the speed of the website, and the network, and the requirement by ANZ to provide a code to validate the charge – sent to our NZ mobile number (necessitating an urgent change of SIM cards… and the hope that we would get service on our NZ number… which after a frustratingly long wait . finally changed from “No Service” to a local network… and hence access to the SMS message… and a confirmed booking GBP259 for Fiat, two passengers and two reserved “reclining seats”.

Saturday 15-Jun-2019 (Manfredonia to Bari to Dubrovnik)

Another few hours spent on the Blogg (it takes foorreevveerrr to upload even the cutdown images we are using… then another foorreevveerrr to insert them into the text… and all the while Google is telling me “there has been a problem, please start again”… which I have tended to “dismiss” and ignore. And sometimes one has some text and imagery that one can update… and sometimes not much seems to have been “saved”… and you get to do it all again!

After that it was just the small matter of driving back to Bari… finding the Port, and the point of embarkation. Easy – given we had an address for the port to plug into the GPS. All went well until we got almost to the Port… after which the GPS sent us off on a truly horrendous route through narrow streets and 90 deg turns – until we gave up and just ignored it – driving in the direction we thought the port was. We did eventually find the “Point of Embarkation”… and made it onto the ferry – which looked very much like an Aramoana vintage ship… and so we departed Italy (and the roads inside the Port were bad to the end!).