The Deters’ Trip to Southern Italy, Monday, May 24.

Today is our final day in Southern Italy. The time has flown by. Life is much quieter and slower here which is a very welcome break. Domenico drove his own car to meet us today as our driver Mario would be staying at the hotel with us (because we have an 8 am transfer to the airport.)

We met Domenico and Mario at 10:30 am after a cold breakfast at the hotel. The pastries were made fresh like at the Picollo Grand and the ingredients were always fresh and local to the area you were in.

Right across the street from our hotel was a church. We started our day there. This was Roman Catholic. One of the biggest things I noticed (because I haven’t gone to Catholic mass regularly since I was a child) was that instead of “lighting” a candle, they now had electric candles. You push the button and they light up. I thought, “that’s definitely safer.” I love the architecture and the artwork in churches. I snapped a few photos, and did a lot of Google translate screen shots for the info (to read later).

Next we went to a Greek Orthodox Church. Domenico said the Catholic Church has a lot of statues. The Greek church has a lot of the story of Christ in pictures.

We then went to an Albanian museum. I found that very interesting. This traditional dress was on display. If a woman had a red dress, that indicated she was married. This blue one would show she was single. Domenico was a wealth of information.

Right outside was a fig tree. In this case it is not time yet for the figs to be ripe. He was showing us that as that is also why we did not see the “production “ yesterday of figs because the figs were still growing,

Next we went to a lookout point. If you were feeling very ambitious you could hike down to a bridge WAY DOWN THERE.

It was a beautiful spot.

Guess what we did next? I’ll bet you’ll never guess. lol. That’s right! We ate. I love booking Calabrian tours with My Bella Vita because Cherrye knows all the great places to eat for the food and for the atmosphere.

After our 2 – 3 hour lunch, we drove to our hotel. And although the tops of these mountains were only 3 to 4000 feet high, you could still “smell” the mountain air. It was a change from being at sea level.

The middle picture on the left was the hair dryer in the bathroom. My windows opened and I could just smell the fresh air. We were all pretty exhausted so we took a rest before heading out for our final Apertivo with Domenico. Yes more food.