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my favorite picture of the trip
taken on our first hike of the day (on Saturday)Dates of travel: May 13th - May 17th, 2009
Recently, my buddy Robert and I got back from one of the best trips I have ever been on. We went to the Gargano Peninsula which is known as the "Spur of Italy" because Italy is shaped like a boot, and the peninsula is located in the exact position of a spur on a boot. The final destination was a small town on the Adriatic Sea called VIESTE. Our arrival in Vieste happened about 17 hours after leaving Milan the day before, but the long trek to southern Italy was absolutely worth it.
*This blog entry is my longest one yet. I had a great time writing it because this trip was full of adventures and crazy stories. I hope you enjoy reading it and read ALL of it!
Our train from Milano to Vieste left from Milan's Stazione Centrale at 11:00PM and was due to bring us to Foggia at 7:00AM. This was my first time taking a night train (with a bed!), so I was extremely excited. We shared a 6-person cabin with 3 other Italians who were all laying in their beds while wearing jeans, sweaters
on the train
striking a pose in my boxers and t-shirt and other warm clothes even though it was kind of hot and stuffy. I wasn't very surprised that they gave me odd stares when I stripped down into my boxers and undershirt and laid down in my freshly made up bed. After the conductor came by to punch our tickets, I promptly passed out and woke up to my alarm at 6:45AM. When we arrived in Foggia, we were a bit bummed to find out that the first bus to Vieste was not until 1:00pm, so we had about 6 hours to kill. It turns out that this wasn't such a bad city to be stuck in for a while. We walked around the town center for a while and then ventured into some of the smaller side streets where we found a large market with local vendors that were selling fruit, vegetables, fish and all other sorts of things. We killed time by grabbing some coffee at a cafe (Italy has turned me into a coffee drinker), taking some pictures and eating some sandwiches in a park. In the park I managed to stumble across a group of old guys playing organized bocce in an open-air building that was
built specifically for people to play bocce. My Italian grandparents built a court at their house in Connecticut to play, but I never realized that people actually played bocce in Italy.
Eventually 1:00PM rolled around and we hopped on the 'Ferrovie del Gargano' bus to take us to Vieste. Almost everything is cheaper in southern Italy so the 2 hour ride only cost us about 5 euros. Thankfully the driver knew what he was doing and was able to maneuver that large coach bus around some extremely tight corners on roads that only had a small fence keeping us from going over the cliff's edge. After arriving in Vieste around 3pm, we managed to find our hotel by asking a few locals to point us in the right direction. I'm glad I did my research because not only was the price right (20 euros/person/night), but it was right on the beach. We were pretty tired from traveling, so we put our stuff in the room, grabbed some sandwiches from a restaurant right down the road and then relaxed on the beach for a couple of hours. It was fairly cloudy out but I still managed to get burnt, and as
I write this my face is peeling haha. At around 7:30 or 8pm we decided to grab 2 bikes from the hotel (they provide bikes for the guests to use, free of charge) and rode north along the coast away from the center of Vieste. The sun was starting to set shortly into our bike ride and by the time we stopped at a small pizzeria on the beach, the sun was almost completely set. About halfway into our meal it was completely black. The good thing about our bike ride was that it was fairly flat so we were able to ride pretty far in 20 minutes. The bad thing was that at this point it was pitch black and we now had to find our way back in the dark. When we headed back towards town, the stray dogs that we had passed on the way (and who had silently stared at us), were no longer visible and were no longer silent. The whole pack barked and howled as we rode by and one even started chasing after us. Robert and I high-tailed it out of there and made it back to our hotel pretty quickly. This kind
of tired us out so we dropped the bikes off and called it a night.
The next morning, we woke up at 8am and ate the free, 'continental' breakfast that was prepared by the woman at the front desk who was also the wife of Matteo, the owner of Hotel Vela Velo. After breakfast I wandered around the small hotel a bit and found a jacuzzi that had not yet been opened up for the season, a weight set that consisted of a single rickety bench press and 2 fully functional kayaks with paddles and all. It didn't take very much convincing when I went back to the room to talk to Robert so we tossed on our bathing suits and headed with the kayaks toward the water. We hadn't really asked to take them, so when the woman and one of the workers saw us bringing them out they were hesitant to let us out on the water because they said it was too rough. I said I was an expert (even though I've only done it once in Maine), and they seemed to believe me but said that we must wear life vests. It's a good thing
we did because they were definitely right about it being rough. Even though it wasn't the ocean, the Adriatic Sea is pretty huge and there were some choppy waves that almost knocked us over. Still, we were able to make it to an island off the coast of Vieste with relative ease. Once we got out of our kayaks and walked onto the island we realized that it was a military island that was strictly forbidden for civilians to be on. Whoops. You'd think that the warning sign with a man and a machine gun would have tipped us off. It wasn't until we saw the sign that explicity said NO TRESPASSING (in Italian, of course) that we realized kayaking somewhere else would be a good decision. Once we went around the island and kayaked further south along the coast, the waves got extremely choppy and we only made it a few hundred meters before heading back. Capsizing was a definite possibility, and since I have no idea how to turn those things back over in the water and since we were far enough from the shore and the island - it could have potentially been a major problem. It
turns out that this was the first of multiple adventures that we would experience over the weekend. When we eventually made it back to the shore, both of us nearly passed out on the beach from fatigue. We decided to refuel and gain back some strength by getting some sandwiches and a few beers to have on the beach.
After relaxing for a bit and showering up, we walked into town to explore more of Vieste. It is a very beautiful city and no matter how much I travel, it never ceases to amaze me how unique and different each city is. Even cities that lie along the same coast of the Mediterranean or the Adriatic or cities that are on the same lake are all very different from one another. In Vieste there is a lot of color to the city, but it is very light and almost pastel. There are also many shades of white and cream in the town that give it a very relaxed and laid back feel. The people in the town are extremely friendly and most of them were locals because tourist season does not peak until July. Even then, there are relatively few
foreigners because 70%!o(MISSING)f the people who vacation in Vieste are Italians and the others are mostly from Germany with a few English, French and American people mixed in. It's a fairly secluded seaside town so that statistic didn't surprise me too much. We explored the town for a good chunk of the afternoon and evening, and by 7pm we had a craving for some pizza. We found a group of school children hanging out in one of the piazzas and we asked them where the best pizza in Vieste was. Not only did they point us in the direction of the pizzeria that was the best in Vieste, but it had just placed extremely high in a competition and was recognized in
Pizza and Pasta Magazine!! I ordered the Mare e Monti which had fresh shrimp, mushrooms and peppers. We even got a picture with the chef who made our pizzas so that we could commemorate the amazing meal. We got our pizzas to-go and ate on a stone wall across from the pizzeria that looked over all of Vieste and out onto the Adriatic Sea. No meal in Italy is complete without gelato, so we walked down the
Robert and I with the chef that made our pizzas at il Borgo Antico!
Their pizzas are among the best in Italy according to Pizza and Pasta Magazine. What an honor! haha steps from the Old Town into the new part of town and relaxed and ate our dessert. After walking around for a while, we headed back to our hotel and called it a night fairly early because we had a big day tomorrow. Earlier in the day when we were walking around town we made a reservation to rent a scooter for the day!
We woke up at 8am again and had an even better breakfast than the day before waiting for us in the open air lobby. After getting ready we went straight to the scooter rental place and handed over 30 euros each and my passport and the girl gave us a massive, 150cc scooter. I talked to my friend Simon from Germany and he said that in his country a special license is needed to drive a scooter that large. She explained to us how to start it and how to brake, but of course, we had trouble with both of these and asked her to explain it once more to us. Surprisingly, she did not look nervous as we drove off. Rather, she just asked that we go slowly on it. With me driving and
Robert on the back, we were 2 minutes into our ride when I came to my first turn. I took the left turn a little bit wide and was heading toward a parked car. As I got closer to it I tried to hit the brake but was grabbing the wrong handle. By the time I realized that the brake was on the right hand side, I was so close to the car that I had to slam on the brake and cut the wheel.....and then BOOM! We skidded and crashed in the middle of the road and Robert fell over me. We escaped with minor injuries because I stuck my arm out to brace the crash. It was more embaressing than anything else, and within a few minutes we were back on the road and heading north away from Vieste. Once we got to the open road I decided that 35-40 Km/hr would be a good speed, but by the end of the day I had gotten it to a top speed of 80Km/hr. At the beginning of the day we were stopping every 5-10 minutes because there were so many rock formations such as arches, caves and grottoes
this was our first stop of the day
it was a lot of fun trying to navigate along these rocks. Much of the coast of the Gargano Peninsula looks like this. just south of Vieste. All of the rock along the coast of the Gargano Peninsula is 'calcareous' and, over time, the calcareous rock has been eroded by water and wind and created many fascinating rock formations. Many of the finest sights are reached via boat, but we were still able to get some great pictures by parking our scooter on the side of the road and hiking down toward the water. The first place we stopped at was great because even though it was somewhat of a tourist stop and there was a tour bus there, all of the people on the tour were old. When we hiked down to the water through the wildflower field, down a few steep embankments and across the rocks, we were the only ones down there and it was great. My favorite place BY FAR that we hiked was at our second stop of the day. We stopped and parked our scooter on the shoulder of the road because we saw a few caves down below that looked really neat. As we got closer, I noticed that one of the caves had light way at the back of, while the one directly next to
THE CAVES
We swam into the cave on the right side. It was a bit further than it looks, and the cave had some serious depth once I got inside of it. it was completely dark. I figured it was worth checking out because it was close enough to swim to, and with the help of the light at the back of the cave, I could see that there was a small "beach" in it. It took very little convincing on Robert's end, so we tossed on our swim trunks and jumped into the surprisingly chilly water. I quickly swam ahead of Robert and was halfway inside the cave when he stopped to take a rest by holding onto a rock at the entrance to the cave. While swimming, I had no energy to look up because I am only a mediocre swimmer and barely had enough energy to reach the back of the cave. When I finally made it onto the beach made of small, rounded pebbles, I was in complete amazement. There were two GIANT holes in the back of the cave that allowed the cave to be illuminated. I wish I had a camera with me because the water was the most amazing shade of blue that I have ever seen. After a little while I realized that Robert had not made it into the cave and, since I
view from the hole above the cave
Chain-linked fence. Barbed wire fence. Nothing could have stopped me from getting this picture. had taken my eyeglasses off, I could not see if he was still swimming towards me. I was still excited about this awesome discovery but a bit worried (because Robert is not the greatest swimmer and I wasn't sure what had happened to him), so I decided it would be a good idea to swim out of the cave and back toward the shore. Thankfully he was already resting on the rocks but he was pretty gashed up from a big wave that had pushed him into the side of the cave. After regaining strength, I tossed on my sneakers, grabbed my camera and hiked around to the top of the cave because I wanted to see if I could reach the two holes that allowed light to reach the cave. I was able to find the holes in the ground....but I had to un-link a chainlinked fence and climb under a barbed wire fence to reach it because it had been blocked off. I laid on my stomach and put my camera over the edge and was able to get some great pictures and I also took a small video.
Compared to this adventure, the rest of the day
was relatively tame. Luckily there were no more incidents with the scooter. In fact, I became quite good at maneuvering it around turns at high speeds and leaning into the turns. I had never considered buying a motorcycle before this trip, but now that I have a slight taste of what it is like, I am definitely considering it! At about 3:30pm we decided to turn around and head back towards Vieste. We had driven 37 kilometers south of the city (74 roundtrip), and it took me one hour of straight driving to get back to town. When we got back to the hotel at 4:30pm, Robert and I both passed out for over 2 hours because we were exhausted. By the time dinner-time rolled around, we were both craving some pizza so we made a pilgrimage into town to eat at the same pizzeria as the night before and had gelato afterward.
Sunday *the last day in Vieste*
The next day we woke up a little bit early because we had to check-out of our room and pay for our 3 nights, and then put gas in the scooter before returning it to the rental place at 9am.
We still had about 4 hours or so until we had to leave Vieste so we decided to slap on some sunscreen and lay on the beach for a while. The day before, while Robert was still passed out from our scooter adventure, I went to the ticket agency to get a bus ticket back to Foggia. The first bus was scheduled to leave at 5:50AM and there was NO way we were going to make it onto that bus. After speaking to the girl behind the counter for 10 minutes in Italian, I figured out that there was a later bus that was leaving from a nearby town (Peschici) at 3:15PM. So, after we relaxed on the beach for a while we got a ride at 1:30 to Peschici from one of the workers at the hotel who had the day off. We paid him 30 euros which was quite a bit cheaper than what we would have paid for a cab. Upon arrival in Peschici we realized that there was not too much to see. Luckily we didn't have too much time to kill. We got to Foggia at about 6:00 but our train was not until 10:30PM.
Hanging out in the piazza in the center of Foggia
waiting for 8:00pm to roll around for the pizzerias to open up I was amazed at how different the city looked between Thursday morning/afternoon and Sunday evening. The city of 150,000 was fairly empty on Thursday, but now there were hundreds of families out and about, walking around the city center. At 8PM, all of the restaurants opened so we headed to a pizzeria and then caught our train at 10:30.
So far, I think that this has been my favorite trip this semester (you can probably tell just by looking at how much I wrote in this blog entry). The physical activity was great and I would compare this to some of the trips that I have taken with my Uncle Michael and his family where we have gone hiking, swimming and kayaking. The only thing that Robert and I didn't get a chance to do was go camping. The Gargano Peninsula and Vieste were a little bit difficult to reach, but it was absolutely worth the long trek and I recommend it to anybody who travels to southern Italy.
Ciao for now.
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