Turnaround Day
Well, this was one of those days that did an about face on
us. Our overnight on the ferry was not
completely unpleasant but it was far from a good experience. Of course the little bunks are miserable and
then add in the folks in the hall or other cabins chatting loudly well into the
night so sleep was hard to find. We gave
up at about 6:00 AM each deciding that we did get at least a couple hours of
sleep. Breakfast continued the
theme. There were no plates, hot hard
boiled eggs and cold scrambled eggs, coffee that had turned to sludge and
crabby Croatian guys as hosts. Anything
left over at the end of the breakfast must get deducted from their pay as they
were doling out things one slice at a time.
Not good.
We were herded off the ferry through the garage once again
fighting for lanes with semis and buses.
Did we mention that it was raining?
Hello Bari, Italy. Now we line up
outside for passport control behind 50 others under a little overhang. Some of us are steered into one line as we
approach the passport checkpoint and others directed to the other. Our line continues to move but the other
stops dead. In fact people from our line
are now using both booths. There are a
bunch of guys in the other line that are hollering at the agents and the agents
are hollering back. It is obviously all
in Italian so we have no idea what the issues are but it is tense. We hustle away as quickly as we can get
cleared and find a taxi right away to get us to the airport for our rental car
pick-up.
Bari, Italy is not Tuscany.
In fact with the rain it couldn’t be uglier. We get our little Citroen Picasso and Sami,
our Samsung direction chick, gets us on the road heading west to the other
coast. We are swapping the Adriatic for the Mediterranean. The land here is flat and either agricultural
or industrial depending on which window you look out. Whatever crops were here are now gone so it
is mile after mile of flat mud. About an
hour into the drive we start to see some low hills, still plowed mud but
better. They in turn give way to higher
hills with trees and a couple nice views. We grab some grocery store snacks off the
highway in Potenza and get back on the road.
This is where it turned around. The higher hills have now become low ancient mountains
with beautiful valley views and little orange roofed villages hanging from the
sides. We are winding through little
cliff hanging roads far from the superhighways.
We have a manual transmission and John never gets out of second gear for
a stretch of about 20 km. The valleys
are completely filled with little houses, grapes and olives. The towns are there to press the olives and
grapes and have a church. This is what
we imagine when we think of Italy. We’re
getting happier.
We get to the little town of Bellosguarda, the general location
of our lodging for tonight, when Sami loses us.
She has us turn right onto a little farm road which is obviously wrong. We want to turn around but there isn’t
anywhere to do it. Sami reroutes us onto
a dirt path and then finally onto a couple of muddy ruts into the woods. This isn’t going to work. We do some fancy back and forth maneuvering
to get turned around and go back to the original right turn and take the next
most likely road that brings us into the village. At the top of the village the road is
closed. A high school kid is walking by
and tries to tell us, and then another fellow overhears the semi-conversation
and comes to the rescue with pretty good English. He knows right where the Agritursimo Villa
Vea is and after some excruciating (for him) explanations of how to get there
he walks John over to the edge of the village and points down at a road below. Go 2 kilometers there! OK!
Amazingly we get to the right place and we’re continuing to
have our moods improved in spite of the detours. This place is gorgeous. We check in with one of the sons at the
counter in the little restaurant. Our
reservation has been lost long ago by his brother Andrew but no problem. He has a nice room for us. We don’t know this brother’s name so we will
call him Brother. His Mom, Angela shows
us to our room off a little porch overlooking rolling hills of grapes, tomatoes
and olives with the village on a hill beyond.
Spectacular.
After settling we explore a bit. The guest rooms are in a separate building
from the main house. The family lives in
the house and it is also where they have a little restaurant just for the
guests, serving all three meals with drinks.
There is a lovely terrace on a hillside beyond the house with a
pool. We take a stroll down into the
olive grove past a lineup of dozens of tomato plants. It’s still a little muddy (the rain has
stopped!!!) so we back out to sturdier ground.
We are generally followed by the three dogs that greeted us when we
first arrived. There is a little stable
with a couple horses, Patti and Polly, next to a little coop with chickens and
ducks.
We return to our little porch/balcony for some reading and
relaxation after a pretty long day. We
share this area with a little black kitten who is lobbying for a job as
permanent house cat. Angela says she is
weakening and has started to feed him so his prospects are good.
When we go to dinner at about 7:00 it is just Angela and us. She directs us to a corner table and starts
with the questions. Would we like
antipasto? Yes. Would we like pasta? Yes.
Do we like rabbit? Yes. Would we
like wine? Yes. Finally we say, “Angela
please just bring us whatever you would like to make.” “Oh grazzi, that is so nice that you have faith
in me.” Then it begins. Tomatoes, basil, mozzarella, prosciutto,
sausage, eggplant, zucchini, peppers, orchietta like clouds in red sauce that taste like the tomatoes were made from butter, braised rabbit
with peppers.
Un-bleeping-believable. Every bite
is like heaven. In fact, please let
Angela be in heaven when we get there.
She tells us that they buy the bottled water and the prosciutto,
everything else is from the farm.
Eventually Brother shows up and pours us some more wine. Angela says she often has the guests help her
make the pasta—one of us would have loved that.
Please remember that we are the only guests and Angela has prepared and
served this meal only for us who are looking at the lights of the village on
the distant hill while sipping delicious wine.
Easily our best dining event of this trip and one of our top five all
time.
We drag ourselves back to our room, say good night to our
kitty (we say ciao and he says miao) and sleep like bambinos.
What did we learn today?
Clouds always come with silver linings.
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