The plan today was to visit some nearby white villages but we awoke to moderate rain and enthusiasm for venturing out waned. A chat in passing with our nearest neighbours, and now new friends, Nick & Helmi from the Netherlands, resulted in a protracted coffee morning session.
Nick Passes Sobriety test 🙂
The coffee morning continued, and, once the sun had passed the yardarm, turned into a beer and gin & tonic drinking session and a lovely chat about any subject that came up, of course, including Brexit 🙂
Today we set off to visit the prehistoric troglodyte settlement of Sassi di Matera and the Trulli di Alberobello famous for the unique trullo buildings, whitewashed dry stone huts with conical roofs.
We left it rather late to leave for our visit and didn’t arrive at Matera until around 4pm and the town was still very busy. We decided to backtrack to the belvedere on the Murgia plateau where there are fantastic views of Matera and the ravine, known locally as la Gravina, over which it hangs. The viewpoints location is 40.6639N 16.6178E.
Today we moved on again, to the coast of the Adriatic Sea. We wished to visit Matera and a few other villages in the Puglia area so we picked a site that would serve as a base for that. Of the Camping Card accepting sites in the area Camping Pineta al Mare had the best reviews so we headed here.
Today we gathered up our nerves and once again ventured into the misery that is driving on Italian roads. We wanted to casually drive the Amalfi coast, stop for photographs, and maybe have some lunch. The route was approximately 85km.
Herculaneum was a wealthy ancient Roman city that was engulfed by the same pyroclastic flow from the eruption of Mount Vesuvius that consumed nearby Pompeii in AD79.
Today we drove over toward Naples to visit the archaeological site.
