Carpets of Wild Pansies and a Seven-Headed Monster!

---

Day Two of driving found Bill at the wheel...

After an Italian breakfast at the bar/cafe (coffee and a pastry), we went back to the Bristrot where our new English/Italian friends made us eggs and toast. They helped us plan our route for the day, including a side trip to a view point a half hour past the village. We set off, thinking we knew just where to go, but it did not urn out to be true...Our first wrong turn happened in the first ten minutes. We were supposed to be looking for a sign to the "Sanctuario Maria del Pollino". We saw a sign that said just "Sanctuario" and decided to go that way....The road turned to gravel as it wound around the mountain, past cows with ringing bells and fields of wild flowers. We found a place with great views and hiked around a bit...and then started back down toward the Tyrrhenian Sea, our destination for the night.

We drove on a mountain ridge for part of the day, up in the clouds at times. There were many free-range horses, cows, and even huge tour buses on the tiny road...we stopped and bought cheese (the best I've ever tasted, but I forgot to write down the name...) and truffles (and met a truffle-sniffing dog...) We had some rain and ran into fog for awhile.

We had a few wrong turns but were doing well until we came to another detour...We couldn't get the GPS to find its way back after miles of driving in the wrong direction, when I realized I had put "no highways" into the navigation...After changing this, we ended up in a muddy tunnel, which brought us out to a highway!

Once we left the mountains and traveled down the valley, the scenery was repetitive and mostly new construction, so we switched to the autoroute. It turned out to take a much prettier path, and was an easy drive (at 60 to130 kmh) except for the frequent blockage of one lane for a mile or so for no apparent reason (maybe to slow down the Italian drivers who often drive at double the posted limit?)

We arrived in the seaside town of Scilla in the late afternoon, with time to find a hotel, walk the beach, and eat dinner, while watching the sun set. You may recall "Scylla" from The Odyssey, Homer's epic poem: "Mythology narrates that Scilla was a beautiful young girl, daughter of Niso, who was King of Megara. She was loved by the marine god Glauco, and was transformed, by a wizard named Circe, into a monster with six heads of ferocious dogs who devoured sailors passing through the Strait of Messina." Scilla was destroyed in 1783 by an earthquake and whatever was left was then destroyed by the 1908 earthquake and 40 foot tsunami that followed. The castle remained, but the town is all rebuilt.

"The truth states that this sea passage was feared since antiquity by all populations, due to strong marine currents. The name derives from the Phoenician skoula (rock) or Greek skola (dog) or Skylla, later translated into Latin as Scylla and Scyllaeum. Some historians, like Strabone and Polibio, say that Scilla was founded at the time of the Trojan War (XII century BC). History instead, calls into cause the first time Scilla clashed with Tyrrhenian pirates who were settled in this coastal area, and the tyrant of Reggio Calabria, Anassilao (493 BC). When the Normans (1062), conquered the City, they were however opposed by the population who locked themselves in the Castle."

There were several different "lidos" (beach bars/cafes that rent chairs and umbrellas) being constructed. After watching this video of a storm in 2012, it's apparent why they have to start from scratch each season:

We drove to Reggio di Calabria the next morning to return the rental car (the agent practically threw us out of the car in her hurry to sign off on the paperwork..."I will park car; you get baggage out now! "), walked several blocks with our luggage to the airport to catch a bus to the port, and then got a "tour" of the city, including much traffic and some protests, due to Labor Day activities. We had to wait a few hours for the next ferry, so sat in the sun and read.

Once in Messina, we found our hotel with help from the always very-friendly Italians, and walked through its cavernous hallways to our less than perfect room. We walked around the old part of town visiting the Cathedral (built in the 12th century, destroyed in 1908 by the earthquake and then in WWII by Allied bombings, and again rebuilt in 1943). Old here (as in Scilla) means after the 1908 earthquake that killed 84,000 people and leveled the town. And some of what was left got hit with bombing in WWII. We spent a miserable mosquito plagued night (along with the sounds of heavy furniture being moved at 3:00AM) during which I threatened to get dressed and go to the train station, taking the first train anywhere...

The next morning we braved the rain and visited a great city museum (found it by accident)..along the way meeting a Romanian goth young man who recommended sights to us, a couple who ran a Tabacchi shop who congratulated us on using correct Italian to buy bus tickets and gave us candies as a reward, and dodged a thunder storm...

We were safely on the train to Palermo by 2:30, and had a beautiful 4 hour trip along the Sicilian coast. Our host had his son pick us up at the train station, and we are now settled into our new home for the next 8 days...

<ins id="aswift_5_expand" style="display: inline-table; border: none; height: 600px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; position: relative; visibility: visible; width: 160px; background-color: transparent;">

---

Photos

The white dot is the car....
There are Bosnian pines on the top of the hill. We hoped to hike up to them, but there was an electric fence, which I confirmed was live by getting shocked....

Tour bus stop
Local cheese and truffles being sold...the group was older French hikers

Comments

[D MJ Binkley]

Enjoying the art
Beautiful

[Beebe]

Thanks...
Really love getting your comments!