FLIGHT OF THE PHOENIX: Matera & Alberobello

Alberobello

By some miracle with Herculean efforts, we survived what was a brutal trial of endurance. The Italian Meteorological Service had issued excessive heat warnings for the regions on an almost daily basis for a while now. The only difference today was that we'd leave the comfortable breeze and water of the coastal towns to explore inland...please do remember that the author of this blog is distinctly heat averse.

So what would make a heat sissy brave what she loathes I hear you ask? The UNESCO world heritage sites of Matera and Alberobello. Plus we had already booked the tour and it was non-refundable...

Before I expand on our day, a little bit about both Matera and Alberobello. Matera is a city known for the Sassi area, a complex of cave dwellings carved into a canyon. The town is ancient and unfortunately came into disrepair with the declining economy of Southern Italy hundreds of years ago, and was labelled the "national shame" of the country before eventually being evacuated in the 1950s for poor living conditions. Restoration started in the 1980s and today many cave houses still remain empty and abandoned.

Alberobello started because of the Italian's flair for skirting the law. The local feudal landowner wanted to evade taxes and thus invited shepherds and farmers to build "Trulli"s, the characteristic cone-roofed huts that makes the town unique. As no mortar was used, the inhabitants were asked to take down the roofs when the tax-man. No roof = not a house = no tax. Genius. This went on for 300 years. Gotta love Italian ingenuity!

As previously mentioned, we picked a tour which included a pick up from Polignano a Mare rather than having to go to Bari to start the tour. We were picked up 0745 at the designated meeting point just outside of the old town. Lara and I decided that we could make our free 0730 breakfast and then 12 minute walk for our 0745 pick up. Lucky Pasquale was fast. We arrived at 0746 and we were not the last ones! That honour goes to the 3 overweight Indian ladies who unfortunately really struggled with the heat. We needn't have worried about being late, once we arrived in Bari to pick up our guide, Sylvia, as well as the rest of the touring party, we had to wait for many late arrivals...

Still smiling, in the then still cool minibus

Olive trees everywhere

Sylvia gave us our requisite run down on the region as well as the history of each of places we would be visiting along our drive. We drove past many vineyards as well as carpets of olive groves. The reason why the water and air was so clear was that there was no heavy industry. Any factories in the area are medium sized at the biggest and most are family owned and related to food production eg olive oil and pasta making. By the time we reached Matera at 10am, the temperature had already reached 40 degrees. We walked around the Sassi area while Sylvia explained the architecture and gave us more history. The cobblestones were slippery even though it was dry so a warning to wear appropriate footwear should you choose to visit. We were so relieved when it was finally free/lunch time. We opted to go to La Latteria Rizzi, the restaurant recommended by the guide. She mentioned that they served local products, it was good value for money and it was the closest to where we stopped at the end of the tour! The food was great, we opted for the meat and cheese board and to share a pasta. It was so hot we had no appetite.

We had to walk through the "newer" part of Matera, still older than most of Australia

Hard to appreciate from this photo, but this is the Sassi, made of buildings half in the caves and half outside

One of the first cave houses restored

A better sense of how the city is built into the side of the mountain

The point of this selfie was to show that initially way back when the dwellings were built on both sides of the canyon, but they moved to one side and abandoned the other side, most likely because it was less steep

And yes they do have gardens somehow

The building at the end is the conservatorium, and underneath that "piazza" is a cavern which is now used as the auditorium

Back to the edge of the canyon and the "new" part of town

Lunch time!!!

Meat and cheese board, everything on the plate was so good

Mezze maniche pasta with mushrooms, pezzente sausage and yummy stracciatella cheese on top. So full of flavour

It was soon time for the hour and a half-ish drive to Alberobello. It was so hot the minibus a/c struggled, but it was still better than no a/c! Who knows what the temperature was by the time we got to Alberobello. The guide said this was hot but not too unusual, the worst is usually late July when temps would go in the high 40s. Yay for August. Alberobello was a town divided into 2, one half had the trullis where locals lived, the other half was reserved for the tourist activities ie souvenir shops, bars, restaurants etc We toured both sides but by now the brain was not really absorbing too much on the trulli archictecture...Kudos to Sylvia at this point, she was fantastic at herding us from one shade point another. There was a significant difference in temperature and how we felt in the shade vs in the sun. It was so hot I could not shop in the free time! My mother would be ashamed of me.

Are we glad we went on the tour? Yes, I don't think we would made ourselves go if we hadn't booked anything and I really don't think I have the necessary skills to drive here! I appreciated the more condensed "look at we need to" version with the necessary information supplied rather than the wandering aimlessly approach. Did I wish the temperature was not crazy? Also yes. Both places would have lent itself to wandering enjoyment fi we weren't so busy looking for somewhere cool to sit and get a cold drink. Although both places did have many tourists, it actually wasn't too busy. Sylvia said that most Italian tourists would actually be AT the beach in August, and that it was much much worse in July because then you'd also have the school and geriatric groups.

The tour officially ended at 5pm and we were glad to be heading back to Polignano a Mare. Who would have thought that going to 33 degrees would be such a welcome relief! We grabbed some foccacia on our walk home to our apartment, showered and pretty much conked out by 7:30pm. All the grand plans of the picture-perfect postcard-esque photos went down the drain. It was pretty point and shoot and check later...