Naples to Matera

16,700 steps

Today we say bye to Joey as she heads home to Fernie and we board a bus to Matera, a UNESCO world heritage site. It is about a 4 hour bus ride, with a short stop for a break, total price 17 Euro for the 2 of us, we paid extra to reserve our seats. Matera is in the mountains on the way from Naples to Puglia, where we will be spending the next couple of weeks.

Matera is a beautiful city that has not changed much in many years. We are staying in an AIRBNB that was partially built in a cave stone wall. We needed to take a local bus to town from where the bus stop is just outside of town for the big busses. We lucked out and a lovely Italian girl was waiting with us that had started in Rome on the same bus as us to attend her boyfriends graduation from music conservatory. She was excited to hear Andre's name, as her name is Andrea. We have found that English is not spoken as much here, we have used French a few times.

We explored for the afternoon (many many steps again) as the weather forecast is not the best for the next 2 days that we are here. Every time you turn a corner it seems like the view is more incredible. There is a large gorge just below the old town, also called Sassi here. There are actually 2 Sassis here, one side where people lived in caves, and one side where the palaces are. Sassi means stone in Italian and if refers to the stones that was made in the caves to built the city

In the 50's and 60's all residents were moved out of Matera as it was not sanitary, that was 15,000 people moved from their caves as it was a national embarrassment as the people were so poor, they were living with their animals in the caves. A big clean up was done and now many of these caves are B&B's , coffee shops, little hotels, or restaurants and a few tourist shops. It was 10,000 years ago that people started moving into the natural caves, that were expanded over the years. There was also over 1,500 cave churches here. It is an amazing city to explore, a UNESCO world heritage site since the 90's. In 2019 it was the European capital of culture, it has come a long way!

For supper tonight we decided to go out. We started with sharing fresh ricotta with fig jam, honey and almonds. This is served with Matera bread called Lucanian Pane di Matera, it is delicious bread made with semolina grain, it is quite yellow. It is quite similar to sour dough bread. We had bought a loaf this afternoon for sandwiches tomorrow at the grocery store and didn't realize what it was.

Saying bye to the streets of Naples

The Alibus to the train station

We were in Row 3 and this was my view until the second stop

Or else I had to look over the seat, Wendy sat in the aisle so she would not get bus sick

Why do people hold their phone like this to talk to someone.

I moved seat as some opened up at the second stop

a few old farm house on the way

Countryside and train bridge

At our cave Airbnb after a 4 hour bus trip

Now went for a walk to explore town. So many churches here and it's beaitiful

Lots of up and down, typical walking alleys unless it is all steps

Across the raving, lots of caves

A closer view

View of Matera

Beautiful sunlight on Matera

So many small places to eat,

The main square in town

Matera at night

Spaghetti and lamb stew for supper, both were delicious

Panna cotta for desset

Starting to drizzle, rain tomorrow 

Where we turn down of a walking street to go to our Airbnb