This day, a day for driving around the Gargano Peninsula (otherwise known as Italy's spur), went really well overall. With a couple of hilarious blips I can only attribute to the intoxication and complications inherent to having a car and being in Italy.
We quit Manfredonia!™ early, which was certainly made easier by the clanging and slamming coming from elsewhere in the hotel. Some seriously thin walls, people. We had already decided that our first stop would be Monte Sant'Angelo, a town that's been hosting pilgrims and tourists since the Archangel Michael appeared there in 490 AD. He left a cloak and a footprint.
We were following signs through the town to the Santuario, when all of a sudden the road we were on was filled with speed bumps. I was thinking to myself, "This certainly is an odd thing to do to a road" when Husbear yelled "STAIRS!"
Yeah, we drove down the stairs. Usually they're marked a little better than that, to avoid just such a situation. Luckily, we had only gone down a few, and we were actually able to back slowly up to the top. Here's a view of our staircase from below.
We found a place to park on relatively level ground and walked over to the Santuario. It's in a grotto well below street level, so you take a series of rather steep stairs to get there. The staircase is lined with tracings of the hands and feet of pilgrims, left there in rememberance of the footprint left by Mike.
The Santuario is not heavily decorated, but has a lot of solemnity nevertheless due to its postion in a cave. It was full of people praying. We tried to be inconspicuous and read our guidebook quietly in the back.
We climbed the stairs back to the top and went in search of the town's traditional treat - ostie ripiene, or stuffed Hosts. Strangely enough, these are the communion wafers used in Catholic Mass (unconsecrated, o'course) sandwiched around candied almonds. (Get it - Hosts? Ha!) Another way the town's been marketing its status as an important pilgrimage site. Hilarious.
After a minor freakout caused by the Smart Car's refusing to start - did you know it has an immobilization setting? - we headed out of town, skirting the ridge above the main road and the sea.
Olives, planted in neat little orchards or in haphazard lines marching up hills, were all we could see. Seriously, Puglia has everywhere else I've seen in Italy beat when it comes to olives.
We saw a sign that makes no sense. My best guess is that it's a point to turn off if you're on fire. Safety first, in the Gargano!
Stop #2 was a beach resort called Vieste. Apparently this area is packed twenty feet high with tourists during the summer, but in January - nobody.
And not much open. We found a bar for due caffé doppi (we brought out the big guns - a double espresso) and climbed up to the top of town to find the Chinaca Amara, or Bitter Stone.
Something like 5000 citizens of the town lost their lives here, beheaded when the Turks sacked the town in 1554. Now, it's just a small piece of a house that's grown up on top of it. People have such a talent for moving on, don't they?
We left Vieste, heading further around the coast to Péschici. The roads we took were very small, winding through heavy trees - and lots and lots of shuttered beach hotels, campsites, and resorts. We were the only car on the road, but we passed a lot of signs indicating that the area was subject to horrible traffic congestion. It was eerie - the ghosts of summer playtime were all around us.
Or perhaps it was just a cow or three.
We did eventually reach Péschici, where we found lots of closed gelaterie and pizzerie and one little salumeria. So we bought sammiches with the local caciocavallo cheese, a big jar of giardiniera (just like Chicago) and some Pringles, and ate them in the car while driving and taking one-handed photographs of the town.
From Péschici, we didn't really have any more planned stops - so we drove through the northern part of the Gargano just admiring the trees and the hills and a few small shuttered resort towns. And the cows, some of which appeared to be grazing on the side of a very steep hill.
Finding ourselves near San Giovanni Rotondo, the pilgrimage point for the most recognizable religious saint after John Paul II, we realized we had to check it out. Padre Pio was a Cappucin monk who died in 1968 and was actually canonized by John Paul II. His bearded, haloed visage smiles beatifically from behind the counters of almost every small alimentari and restaurant and souvenir shop south of Naples, so we had to at least see what was up.
What was up was a giant tourist industry that has swallowed the town of San Giovanni Rotondo. We got there and saw tents selling statues of Padre Pio, from palm-sized to life size; votive candles with his face on the side; icons and posters and T-shirts and keychains. He started a hospital while living there which is now supposed to be one of the best in Italy, but it's surrounded by parking hawkers demanding 2 euros an hour to park. This display actually made me really angry - the town benefiting off of these poor, suffering people, who travel hoping Padre Pio will send them a miracle - but then I realized, what should they do? They get up to 8 million pilgrims a year.
Anyway, we ended up hightailing it out of town without stopping, and went towards another small town - Rignano Gargánico. On the way, some random sign exhorted us to pull off onto a dirt road to visit the centopozzi, or hundred wells - and who were we to argue?
The wells themselves turned out to be giant municipal-looking bricked holes in the ground filled with a gloopy sludge - so not too cool, but there were these really neat small stone huts all over the place. We were heading to the trulli region the next day (more about that later) - so we were interested in small homes built from stone.
After a bit more driving, we did eventually reach Rignano Gargánico. The town was small, and we didn't stop, but we did pull over just outside when the view of the road we'd be taking brought us up short.
It looks like a commercial, doesn't it?
The road wound down from the hills of the Gargano into the plains of the Tavoliere, where we would be meeting up with the main autostrada. For a moment, the olives gave way to fields of strong-smelling fennel, perfuming the air with their delicious anisey goodness. (The fennel we get here in Florence is nowhere near as pungently wonderful as this stuff.)
We found the main road, and stayed on it for a little while before reaching the turnoff to Lucera. When we got to the road, we noticed that the sign for the turnoff had been marked through with duct tape, but we shrugged and took the road anyway. We went for about 50 yards before a hole in the road almost swallowed the tiny ForTwo.
Husbear, of course, voted for pressing on, and while I was thinking that perhaps this road wasn't actually in use any more, I acquiesced. About a kilometer of slow driving over bumps and around holes ensued, until we came to a giant black and white striped sign blocking the road.
So, back the way we came. Not sure why the sign was still up at all for that turnoff, as Husbear reports the road behind the black and white sign appeared to have fallen down a ten-foot cliff.
We found another way into Lucera, with this intimidatingly futuristic war machine looming over us much of the way - it definitely has a Lucas-like vibe to it. And no, I'm not sure what it is.
The only directions we had for the hotel in Lucera was that it was outside the old town gate, of which there are usually four, so again with the getting lost. We did eventually get directions and find the hotel, La Balconata Due, which I am going to recommend everyone STAY THE HELL AWAY FROM.
According to our book, they ran a cheaper albergo inside the city walls. When Husbear asked about it on booking, he was told it was closed. So we booked at the Balconata 2, though it was more than we wanted to pay, because Lonely Planet also said the rooms were decorated with an eye for style and the views over the plains of the Tavoliere were impressive.
Roight. Check out this eye for style. (And I won't include a picture of the view, which was of the parking lot and restaurant outside. Truly breathtaking.)
Plus, when we left, they told us the price had gone up by ten euros and the albergo was in fact open, and denied ever having told us differently. AVOID. These guys had a monopoly on Luceran hotels for too long, and it obviously went to their heads, but there are now other places to stay.
Ahem.
We left the hotel and took part in the passeggiata, traversing pretty much the whole town.
It's a very late town - most restaurants don't open for dinner until 8:30. We found a place that looked likely - Lupus in Fabula, again a recommendation - and ate a little after 9... not very good, though the wine from the region is excellent. (Seriously, if you put "sugo della nonna," or "grandma's sauce," on your menu, you better make sure it's not just a watery tomato sauce. Especially if you have the waiters telling people it's salsa di cinghiale, or wild boar sauce. And stay away from the microwave when reheating antipasti, ok?)
I still liked Lucera better than Manfredonia!™, so there's that.
Tomorrow, we eat delicious burrata (a crazily creamy mozzarella, which is not made from donkey milk, even if we stupidly thought it was when we first met it), see a castle that's actually quite cool, and visit a town that means "slut" in Italian.
Great photos & humor in a well told story. We were on a Gargano back road in '04 when I suddenly braked as a herd of free-roaming horses galloped down the street at us. One stopped, sticking his head in the open window, scaring the hell out of my wife.
Posted by: Gary | Tuesday, 15 July 2008 at 15:03