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Published: October 12th 2013
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Overlooking the Sassi Area of Matera
Sandy said it reminded her of looking out over the Grand Canyon, plays the same games with your size and depth perception We're sitting in the Rome airport, looking at appropriately (since we're leaving) gloomy and rainy skies, it has become clear that I'll be back home before this blog is ever completed... Of course we have hours of travel ahead of us before arriving back in California, so who knows? I'll certainly give it a try!
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Monday, September 30
What do you say about an entire day of driving in Italy, and encountering every challenge possible--thunderstorms, blinding setting sun, winding mountain roads, aggressive autostrada drivers, frenetic city centros at rush hour, filled with darting pedestrians? See blog title! The final straw, however, was sitting in stop and go (mostly stop) bumper to bumper traffic on the coastal road to Sorrento. It took us over two hours to go 10 km, and we were stopped about 500 ft from the turn onto the road to our hotel for about 30 minutes!
But the highlight of the day was our stop in the town of Matera, up in the hills above the "arch of the boot". We had heard and read a bit about the old "Sassi" area of the town and thought it sounded like it might be
interesting. But we were unprepared for the bustling city we had to make it through (in the rain) to get there. Anyway, we eventually found the right area, and it was an incredible sight! We stood at a low wall and looked out over a sea of small buildings, some carved out of the soft tufa rock sides and outcroppings of the small steep valley below, some built on top of each other, climbing up the sides of the the ravines. Across the valley was a wall of caves that also served as homes. There is also a network of churches carved into the rocks, some dating back to medieval times. In 1993, UNESCO declared the Sassi a World Heritage Site.
The story has it that it was considered a disgrace when the extreme poverty of the people living in the Sassi district was brought to light, about 50 years ago, and the inhabitants were all promptly relocated to the modern city. The Sassi stood abandoned until relatively recently, when locals made a push to revitalize it as a tourist venue, and renovated the buildings to accommodate shops, bed and breakfast lodging, restaurants, galleries, etc. Despite this, it still
The Caves Across the Valley...
...where original inhabitants lived. has an abandoned and ancient look to it, thus its use as the backdrop for many movies, including Mel Gibson's "The Passion of Christ". Not sure even our photos do justice to its uniqueness, and my words certainly can't capture it. So here's a something from a tourism brochure: Over the course of the centuries, the Sassi has changed its shape over and over again in an ongoing dialogue between rock and architecture, canyon and bell-tower, flowing into a cityscape of incomparable beauty and distinction.
We saw a lot of beautiful scenery today, as we drove from the Adriatic to the Mediterranean--wooded mountains, acres of vineyards and olives, and the Gulf of Naples--but the best sight of all was the view from the balcony of our Sorrento hotel room, looking out upon all the sparkling lights of the town and the harbor below, and knowing we'd made it unscathed!
For our GT, BT today, we unanimously chose the sentiment expressed in the tittle of this blog post. But for your entertainment, here are our quotes of the day:
#1. Dave: What's the speed limit here? Sharon: I think it's 90 Km/hr. Dave: OK, so 120 is good,
then...
#2. Sandy: All these roundabouts are giving me hot flashes!
#3. Dave: After this day of driving, I think I'm an official Italian...
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