The modern stone-age family heads to the heel

Our latest adventure on Italian soil took my sisters Sheila and Rosie and me to Puglia, the beautiful and rocky region in the heel of the boot. Before we landed there, though, we spent two nights in the adjacent region of Basilicata, in the city of Matera, the storied UNESCO World Heritage Site built of caves and the setting for The Passion of the Christ and No Time to Die.

Matera can be a little trying to get to. We had to leave the car outside the city and take a shuttle in (for obvious reasons), and finding the garage was a struggle, even with navigation on. I’d recommend consigning your rental car somewhere nearby and hiring a driver to take you in.

Once you get inside, however, you quickly forgive the petty aggravations of arrival. Our shuttle driver clearly had grown accustomed to the reactions of folks on their first pilgrimage to Matera, because as we came around a certain turn and the cave city opened up before us, he yelled “Omigod!” just as my mouth was open to say the same. I do hate being a cliché’ with a face, but gotta admit it was funny.

Matera is a pretty fabulous place, not least because it's so visually striking. It's a colpo d'occhio, in the Italian vernacular. An eye hit. And that 's owing not just to the singular architecture but to the fact that the light and seemingly nearby clouds are eager to put on a show with some regularity. Exhibit A below: At top is a kind of high street in the upper part of Matera. Just look at the sunlight playing on the buildings even as an almost solid blanket of clouds threatens to hit you in the head. And check out the golden light falling on just one building amid the grey sky in the photo at center below.

The grim Chiesa del Purgatorio, dedicated to depictive messages of mortality, caught our attention. This detail of the entry door is a reminder that king, cardinal, and commoner all wind up in the same situation. Unfortunately, we couldn't get in without a ticket, which proved difficult to secure.

Staples of Matera's traditional "poor"cuisine that you'll find on virtually every menu include orecchiette dishes (including a good vegan one with chili, broccoli rabe, and breadcrumbs); and variations on a legume soup called, rather unfortunately to the American ear, crapiata. Its name notwithstanding, I was a fan.

Now a popular tourism destination, Matera not long ago was a black eye in the face of Italy, home to about 16,000 grossly impoverished people. These modern-day cave dwellers (literally, trogloditi!) were given new homes by the Italian government as recently as the 1970s, when lack of indoor plumbing, clean air, and electricity, together with the common practice of sharing close, dank quarters with livestock, spread diseases like malaria and an epidemic of infant mortality among the population. (Pics below give an idea of those living quarters.) Italy had to act, so the government moved the entire populace to ad hoc developments above the cave city. That area is called the Piano (Plateau) and the cave section the Sassi (Stones).

Ironically, some of the abandoned Sassi architecture is now considered priceless. Ancient frescoed cave churches have been unearthed in recent decades, including one called the Crypt of Original Sin that's considered to be the cave-art equivalent of the Sistine Chapel. Its frescoes date to the 8th century. Unfortunately, our quick tour of the city excluded all of this. I've since read that to see some of these well-hidden sites, one needs to get acquainted with some locals who have a friend who has a friend who has a key...

Thanks to its crazy-long history and abandoned artifacts, what once was considered La Vergogna d'Italia (the shame of Italy) is now a national treasure, and erstwhile inhabitants of the Sassi whose families once hid their origins now wear their native-Materano status as a badge of honor.

I got some trivets in limestone that mimicked the look of the caves’ air vents, which could be seen all over the city.

Speaking of cave dwellers...

We stayed in gorgeous cave accommodations called Aque Cave. They, like the brother-sister team who were our hosts, were magnificent for their attention to detail. But they did have their drawbacks -- as the modern stone-age traveler might expect when deciding to stay in a cave. The big walk-in shower was an entire room with no door and a view on to the living area. The bathroom had only a curtain to pull for privacy. Our high-walled soaking tub on the lower floor of our cave was an enchanting idea, but the tub took about an hour to fill. (It took me another 20 minutes to figure out how to climb out of it with my recently dislocated hip. I ended up sort of dragging myself hands-first onto the slippery floor.)

Here's Sheila with our host Paola, who was not only a delight but a miracle of information and opinions that were enlightening, amusing, and sometimes surprising. We might have to go back just to hear more from her. But goodbye for now, Matera!

On to Puglia

From Matera, we drove two hours or so to Ostuni: The White City.

Ostuni is famous for its nearly all-white architecture largely built of limestone, which helped disinfect poor homes during the plague. But beware the White City! It has a black heart that harbors murderous intent. Its stones are so slippery and its streets at such a pitch that you walk around in anything besides orthopedic shoes at your peril. And it wasn't just those of us of a certain age who feared for our lives. We popped into a shop (or, more accurately, shuffled gingerly into a shop, holding onto doorframes as best we could) so Sheila could buy some sensible sandals and encountered a few 20-somethings who were doing the same because one of them had just wiped out on the stones.

The Land of Green Gold

Puglia is renowned for its flavorful olive oil, so we gladly signed up for a tuk-tuk tour of the olive groves surrounding Ostuni.

To our dismay, we learned of an epidemic that’s wiping out olive trees in Puglia, one of the world's most important producers of olive oil. The disease, called Xylella fastidiosa, has already knocked out more than 1/3 of Puglia's 60 million trees. Our guide told us there were two theories in circulation: One is that some trees imported from Greece happened to carry the bacteria; the other, much darker theory treats of a conspiracy involving Turkey, Greece, and greedy forces inside the Italian government itself. You can see the ravages of the disease in the dry land where olive trees stood until recently and in the withered patches on the still-standing trees at left contrasted with the healthy trees at right.

Olive trees have so much personality that it's easy to anthropomorphize them. Some are contemplative, some jocular, some downright grumpy. With age, they can become shape-shifters and can split into two trees. They'd make a good living as Rorschach tests if they could hire themselves out.

Take, for example, Il Grande Vecchio (The Great Old Man) below. I can think of at least four things he brings to mind. (Not that I'll share them and expose my psyche to would-be analysts.) Ostuni is home to this 3,000-year-old tree at Masseria Brancati that's still bearing fruit! Just think. The Great Old Man was standing and delivering before Julius Caesar, Jesus, and Aristotle were born.

Photo: Charles Vollmar

There’s another olive tree called The Thinking Tree (L'Albero Pensante), reputed to be at least 1,500 years old and possibly as many as 4,000. To protect this ancient sage from ill-intentioned gawkers, no location is given beyond its hometown, Ginosa. One must find it. Damn! I’ll have to add that to my to-do list for my next jaunt to Puglia, when I plan to stalk Helen Mirren.

Photo:  Stellar History (stellarhistory.com)

This was a particular treatment of mussels* in broth I hadn’t seen before, and it really appealed to me. It was unique to Ostuni as far as I could tell.

We really liked the vibrant tomato sauce we had at lunch and asked for the secret. (Here, it's enrobing a veg-and-breadball.) Our server told us it was a combo of three types of tomato: San Marzano, datterino giallo, and Piccadilly. The tomatoes were flash-boiled to remove the skins and then sauteed with the usual suspects: good olive oil, garlic, onion, parsley, salt. (I'd say maybe some basil, too.)

My new favorite drink is an Italian cocktail called a Hugo, made of Prosecco, elderflower syrup (in the form of St-Germain liqueur), soda water, muddled mint leaves, and lime or lemon.  It's a competitor to the famous Aperol Spritz. I do enjoy the Spritz, but it's nice to make a change sometimes.

The trip was marked, of course, by some of our usual slapstick. Here I'm making fun of Sheila‘s emphatic gestures as she told a waiter she and Rosie wanted a dish split in half!

From Ostuni, we took a little morning trip to the quaint town of Cisternino, where we found some cute shops. (Poor Rosie pretty much served as trip photographer, so I don't have too many jaunty pictures of her, I'm sorry to say.)

Yabba dabba doom! Our stony and murderous accommodations

By the time we left Ostuni, it was dawning on us that our accommodations were trying to kill us.

All were picturesque, stony...and dastardly. (As I've noted, even the cave accommodations in Matera that we loved had their perils. And the one in Rome where we'd stayed after flying overnight had a platform shower parked right inside the bedroom itself. It was poorly lit, slippery, and had dark, psychedelic lights -- so dark you couldn't see the indications on the confusing shower apparatus. The door opened from the outside so you had to force your way back out of the shower after a brief panic. Finally, there was a coffee maker placed just downstairs from the "head-diving platform" with a steel bar sticking straight up on which to impale oneself en route to face planting in the hot coffee.)

Anyway, the accommodations in Ostuni should’ve come with a warning label. Having survived the town's perfidy, we found the stone stairs to the three levels in our lodging were all treacherously steep and uneven. You had to hang on to the banister (where there was one) and haul yourself up as if you were on a forced climb in Outward Bound. In two spots, there was no banister, so going up and down was a death-defying feat.

In Lecce, too, the accommodations were lovely in a town-of-Bedrock sort of way. But they, too, were perilous. When is a Jacuzzi less relaxing than terrifying? When there's a huge rectangular one the size of a kiddie pool (and black as the entrance to hell) right at the foot of your bed, that's when. Better skip the Ambien tonight, folks, lest the tub crack your skull before you can sleepwalk into the kitchen to get those M&M's. (J'accuse, Jacuzzi!)

As Rosie remarked (not without affection), things in Italy are often just a little facocked. I have to admit (also not without affection), it’s true. The Christmas decorations are just a bit frayed and ratty around the edges. The marble bathrooms are gorgeous but the showers leak and make the floors as slippery as soapy ice. The rental car inexplicably fogs up while you're on the road and can't be cleared for love or money. (Yeah, that happened, too. The car apparently was in cohoots with the accommodations.)

A particular kind of beauty

I’d read somewhere that the quality of light in Ostuni and Lecce was particular, and particularly so near sundown. I wonder now if that’s why so many angles of these towns gave the impression of a movie set. I kept remarking on it but couldn't pinpoint what gave that effect.

Here are some scenes from Ostuni. See what I mean?

And now some shots of Lecce, including the Roman amphitheatre that's still being excavated...

Shopping

We'd been told that Puglia is a region of fabulous crafts. We found that to be true, and would say the same for Matera. We saw lovely and distinctive hand-made sandals, jewelry, wall art, and, most of all, ceramics. The ceramics were varied and magnificent, and we gorged ourselves on them.

Here are Ulysses and Penelope. Sheila and I bought them and broke up the couple.

This Leccese artist clearly loved women and dedicated nearly his entire collection to them.

He told us his mother had worked in the tobacco fields (no longer extant) outside the city. He said the piece below attempts to capture her coming home bedraggled and drenched with sweat from toiling in the high temperatures at which tobacco is processed; the interior of the piece is an explosion of color that aims to express her delight at returning home to her family.

Rosie fell in love with these pomi, flower bud-shaped ceramic symbols of fertility that are ubiquitous in the region. She bought the blue one and now wishes she'd sprung for more.

I decided this owl plate was an Italian kitchen must-have.

I fell in love with these wall decorations that we first saw in Matera and then in town after town. They’re made of painted wood and trimmed with lights of different colors. They're the Christmas regalia of my dreams.

We were in Puglia at the end of September when both air and water temps made it enjoyable to swim. Puglia's southern situation makes it beachable through October -- and without the summer crowds.

On our way back to Rome, we detoured briefly to Alberobello, home to a concentration of trulli, the little fairy-tale houses of conical shape that you also come upon along the roadside, some ancient and in ruins. You can stay in a trullo if you're so inclined. For me, these little houses are fun to duck into for a peek, but would quickly make me claustrophobic. Someone told me a few years ago that they were becoming popular as summer homes for city-locked Italians, but I don't know if that trend continues.

The plaque below shows the different types of trulli and symbols used to decorate them.

My Takeaways

Although it was a very enjoyable trip, I felt like we'd failed to suck fully at the teat of Puglia. When I visited the region years ago on my own and made my way along the coast staying at frantoii and beach resorts , I got a much better sense of the beauty of the coastline. If you plan to go, consider staying outside the cities.

I’ve long maintained that I prefer hotels to friends’ homes or B&Bs or home rentals when traveling because I don’t want to worry about leaving mascara stains on the towels and I don't want to make my bed. I also like to know there's a concierge downstairs should I need one. I now advise still more emphatically: Stay at a hotel! I made the mistake of booking into accommodations in Ostuni and Lecce that were the equivalent of AirB&Bs. I must have been distracted when I searched on hotels.com, because I never would’ve done so wittingly. In both places, we had some confusion in terms of meeting up with people to get the key and other information we needed, like where we could safely park.

All that said, if Lecce is on your itinerary (as I think it should be) and you want to stay in the center, stay at Patria Palace, a beautiful hotel nicely situated in the heart of the city.

I would not recommend staying in the town of Ostuni, which can be covered in a few hours and is, as I said, tricky and downright unpleasant to navigate. You almost feel like you shouldn't have a glass of wine with dinner for fear of taking a spill. Instead, stay at a beautiful masseria (farmhouse) or frantoio (olive oil mill) outside the city and take a day trip in.

I also got cocky or lazy or both and failed to do the research I should have done prior to visiting the places we did. We missed some potentially very interesting sites, particularly in Matera.

So those are my recs and my warnings. Learn from my mistakes. I hope not to repeat them next time I head to the heel.

Nevertheless, it was a dabba doo time. And we're all still in one piece. Take that, caves, cars, and 'commodations!

*Mussels are one of just two exceptions to my vegan lifestyle.