Went for a quick run this morning.. CHecked out two shrines just a 100 or so meters up from the house. This one says If you stand in the right place you’ll see the apparition of the Virgin Mary. Ilalians really love Mary.
Heres a view from here of a nearby town…
And here’s a protrait of an even more nearby chicken.. our neighbor
Luigi picked us up at 9.. but couldn’t leave just yet because the wash machine was still working. We got on the road to Pizzo about 10.. and as always in cars.. I fell fast asleep .instantly .
I woke near pizzo and looked around.. same wonderful scenery of hill villages
Our first stop was the Chiesseta di Piedgrotta that we found in several places. The fact that it was in Atlas Obscura is always a good sign for us.
The Chiesetta (little church) was carved out of a limestone cliff rThe story it was based on an old story of 17th century sailors who prayed to mary during a storm and promised to build a church their if their lives were spared.. There’s no record of the real wreck.. but the story inspired a ia local sculpture beginning to begin carving out a cave church there beginning in the 1880’s.. When he died in 1919, his son took over and kept expanding the church and its sculptures for about 40 years. After that the place became abandoned. The sign said that during this time a bot or boys broke in and broke many of the statues.(. not sure why they assumed it was boys !.. not girls) . In the 1990’s (I think) an Italian sculptor living in Canada came hoe for a visit.. fell in love with the story and moved here and began renevating the place.
It was really cool and wierd.. the statues are carved out of the same rock that the cave is made out of.. You have to appreciate the deotion all these folks had to making this place possioble
FRom there we drove up into the city center. First order of busienss was food !. Luigi helped us find this really great place ‘La Lampara’
The cook was Paulo and he used to live in LA. He took really good care of us .. He modified the dishes to our preferences and explained how he adjusted the cooking times to make the pasta perfect (it was !) every time . I had ravioli with fish , great salad and veggies. Linda had wonderful pasta with local tomaties and david had seafood pasta.. really wonderful food.
Then we took around the very cute (and touristy) seaside town of Pizzo
THere qwas a very famos family named ‘Murat’ here.. so I took a bunmch of pics for my very good freind Murat in Wien .
Then we stopped for the towns famous gelato.. there are more than 20 gelato places around the town square. Their specialty is a kind of gelato truffle.
By then it was time to go find luigi and head home. We enjoyed walkign down the narrow streets
we kept seeign this figure of a kings head (>) wiht his toungue out.. not sure what it meant.. but there must have been 4-5 of them
We found Luigi.. and headed back to Maino Marchesata with a stop in a huge grocery store. It was so fun tring to make ourselves understood.. The staff at the store were so fun and helpful even though we didnt share a common language. We were looking for soemthing weird to drink.. and I came across this bottle of Fernet-Branci (or “frikky Bernachi” as Gabe and I call it.. brings back memories of our accidental trip to paraquay several years ago where we baught a bottle of this stuff.. YUCK !)
We also bought a great cheese, Tellegio, that. brought back great memories of good friends and good travel in e when I was an exchange student in Europe in 1979-80.
We got home and were still too full to consider dinner. We made a nice salad and sat outside and watched night fall wiht the neighbors many (many, many) cats.
We tool a late evening walk back up to see the church.. it’s a nice place to alk around..
we went by the Mary shrine again
Later that night I decided I wanted to go for a swim. It turns out the owners want you to where bathing caps.. whcih is funny.. for two reasons.. 1). my head is where I have the least hair on my body.. and 2).. they didn’t say you needed to where anything else :
Well.. at least my head had something on 🙂
Nite all, nite sam
-me