Shi and Gabe get Sassi in Matera
Trip Start
Mar 27, 2006
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6
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Trip End
Jun 06, 2006
Matera, Italy
Wednesday, April 5, 2006
We arrived early in Matera, city of the Sassi; cave dwellings inhabited from the early neolithic period up to today. This was our first shot at showing up and finding somewhere to sleep...in this case a cave. It proved to be a bit difficult, but after some help from the tourist office, we booked what was said to be the last room in town. The owner of the B&B Del Casel, Roberto, picked us up from the tourist office and gave us the ride of our lives into Sassi town. At first sight, well smell, our home sweet cave was damp, cold and musty...a bit like our first basement apartment. Roberto claimed the back room was over 1,000 years old (this was the new part of town).
After settling in, we set out for the rest of the afternoon on a walking tour of the city. This involved many, many stairs, among cave dwellings and newer homes
a. Hanging with Mr. Sassi
. Matera was the setting used in "The Passion of the Christ". Certainly there are areas that had that old Testament charm. What's really shocking, is that people were living in the least luxurious of the Sassi well into the 1950's at which time they were finally relocated to modern homes. A Church: St. Maria de Idris
Shilo's thoughts- Also cold and wet, the rock church had fragments of Byzintine paintings remaining, small windows and lots of wooden crosses on the floor. Most impressive to me was the cliff outside with stone crypts remaining. The view from the cliff looked out to some of the earliest Sassi across the ravine.
Gabe's thoughts- The Byzintine art is some of my favorite so far. Sharing the small dark church with a group of Italian teens on a school trip not my favorite so far. Apparently the Matera housing authority has no problem with black mold, the place would be covered with "Mold Remediation Professionals" in the USA.
The down side to Matera, other than the mold, is that it's a bit like the Hotel California...you can never leave. It took two tourist office agents over an hour to come up with two option to get to Sicily. 1) 1 bus, 4 trains, 1 ferry= 16 hours. 2) 2 buses, 2 trains, 1 ferry = 12 hours. We took option 2, our longest and most expensive travel day to date.
"Che vedura?" (which vegetable). In every garden in Puglia, we'd seen the same unfamiliar vegetable. So Gabe asked. The older gentleman was surprised and happy to tell us it was fava.
Shi and Gabe
