Thursday 27th October 2022
Well what a lucky find our little apartment in the heart of Matera Old Town. We woke and David wasn’t feeling very well. Runny nose, sore throat and headache. After a doing a negative RAT and breakfast we went out sightseeing again. This time taking a different route down to the outer wall of the old town. From here you could go into the Parco della Murgia Materana which was in to the gorge and across a suspension bridge. Then up the other side where you could go in to some primitive cave dwellings. They ranged in size from tiny holes that you would have to slither through that opened up larger inside. To larger 2 entrance caves with two or three rooms. You could see shelves and bed insets into the walls. It was a very interesting morning, unfortunately David wasn’t well enough to do the hike but he explored the other section of the old town we hadn’t seen last night. Once we checked out and I got back from the hike in the gorge, we went to see the Casa grotta del Casalnuovo. “This was a cave house which was a typical house of the Sassi, excavated on several levels in the limestone rock. Made up of 5 rooms, it has been preserved up to now, the furniture and original household tools that attest to the daily life of the family who lived here until 1958. And in general, the ancient peasant and shepherd culture of Matera.” We also visited a church which was on three levels, it was very simple as well. After our little visit in the sassi, we headed on our way, a short 20min walk back to the car. A short stop for the best gelato just outside the old town.

On our way again, we have about an hours drive to Bari, where we will catch the ferry tonight to Dubrovnik Croatia. First stop though, it is time to return our battered car to the car hire company. On arrival we had to explain about the graze from the incident in Bellagio and the horse bite from Sasso Gran National Park. The graze from Bellagio was poo-hooed as nothing and the horse bite they could not believe. They have never heard anything like that before. A bit like the excuse “The dog ate my homework”, very hard to believe. Anyway, on reading our policy we thought we would be up for 2 x incidents at €1000. Lucky for us the cost for the repairs plus time off the road for the car only came to €510.73 total. What a relief! We still may be able to claim some back on our insurance, only time will tell. The guy at Avis was great. He then booked us a taxi to the Port ticket office, organised for it to wait whilst we converted our tickets, and then dropped us to the Port to await our ferry. We were travelling on Jarolinija and sailing at 9pm. We thought last checkin was at 7pm, but it really was checkin started at 7pm. SWo we had a long wait for checkin as we arrived at 4.30pm. Oh well. We wanted to ensure we had enough time at the car rental for hidden problems but there were none.

We leave Italy tonight after 6 weeks exploring, from north to south and east to west, in a roundabout, zig zag fashion. We have enjoyed it immensely and have covered so much ground. We have seen beautiful scenery, magnificent churches, buildings and incredible architecture. Such an amazing history in this old country.

We boarded the ferry at about 8pm, went to our cabin, then enjoyed some pasta for dinner. We then headed back to our cabin for hopefully a good nights sleep. It was a little rocking and rolling but not too bad at all.