Day 32 - Matera

# Campari & Soda: 0, # Gelati: 1

I slept very badly last night.  I feel asleep easily enough but at about 1am I was woken by a cat yowling.  No matter how deeply asleep I am, that is a sound that wakes me up straight away.  It was pouring with rain and I felt so bad for the poor thing.  It would yowl non-stop for about a minute or 2 then be quiet for about 10 to 15 minutes, before starting up again.  I couldn't get back to sleep and eventually caved.  I opened my door and called out to the cat.  I have no idea what I would have done if it had come to me but I couldn't leave it out in the rain.  Well, it didn't come to me but it did stop yowling. Instead, it meowed and I meowed back and it went quiet - for about an hour.  I noticed a couple of places it could hole up out of the rain if it wanted to, so I just tried ignoring it after that.  It eventually stopped around dawn.  I wonder if it was a female on heat.

Anyway, I hoped to be able to catch up on some sleep by sleeping in, but it was not to be.  I had assumed the sassi would be quiet since they are made of solid stone.  However, because they are solid, the walls transmit sound very well.  All the guests in the sassi around me got up bright and early.  Grr.

I eventually left the hotel around 9:30am and headed to the Piazza Vittorio Veneto where my hike tomorrow will start from.  Underneath this piazza is this enormous cistern called the Palombaro Lungo.  It used to be a major water supply for Matera and was in use up until the 1930s.  The well in the piazza was covered over then.  While people knew it was there, there wasn't access to it until it was re-opened in the 1990s.  It is huge.  It can hold up to 5 million litres of water.  They keep the water level low now but you can see the high tide mark on the walls.

When it was re-opened they found all sorts of things that had been dropped down the wells and were now floating in the cistern.  This included a number of metal buckets.  You can still see the rust marks on the ceiling that they made when the cistern was full.

After visiting the cistern I went to the Casa Noha.  This is one of the ancient houses that has been given to the Italian equivalent of the National Trust.  In it you get a short video history of Matera and the sassi.  It is a classic story.  Originally, the town was a thriving place.  People lived in houses up and down the hillsides, with the sassi caves being used as workshops and storage.  Then the rich got very, very rich and moved away.  The economy of the region collapsed and the middle classes disappeared.  In the end, the poor got very, very poor and had to cram into the sassi themselves.  The plight of the locals finally got public attention in the 1950s.  Various intellectuals came up with a plan for reviving the town but the politicians didn't follow their plans.  Instead, they did what was politically expedient and cheap and didn't work.  It wasn't until the town was discovered by film directors that sensible plans started to be followed and people moved back into Matera.  A lot of the old city is still deserted and derelict.

After visiting Casa Noha I tried to follow one of the walking trails they suggest.  However, Matera is so very, very 3D it is hard to follow where to go on a map.  Also, very few of the paths and staircases are named in any way.  You have to navigate by named buildings, e.g. turn left at Cafe XX and then right at the B&B YY.  It doesn't help that the city has kindly put up signs pointing out tourist routes.  Why this isn't as kind as it first appears is because there are half a dozen routes and they all use the same sign, so even with them to follow you can still end up somewhere completely different to what you had planned.

In the end I gave up on trying to follow any particular route and just ambled around.  I came across a film crew making something in a church overlooking the hills.  I had felt sorry for myself yesterday having to lug my suitcase around.  The poor film crew here had to go twice as far and carrying lights and camera equipment.  You would get very fit living or working here.

I stopped for lunch at the Osteria La Vigna del Mare.  It has very ordinary reviews but I thought it was quite decent.  I had the menu of the day.  It start with a (sensibly sized) antipasto plate of local cheese and salami, then a sensible serving of pasta with chicory, olive oil & garlic and finally a secondi of a local sausage with roast potatoes.  This all cost me only 25€ (plus water, plus wine, plus coperto) so it was good value for money.

After lunch I tottered back to my hotel (which I found quite easily - go me) for a nap. 

After my nap I headed out with the plan of going to the Museo Nazionale di Matera.  On the way there I stumbled across MUST (Museum of Underground Stories and Traditions).  It is a tiny little museum but shows how the sassi were original used as cisterns, for grain storage or for wine making and such like.  

After this I went in search of somewhere to buy my lunch tomorrow.  There will be nowhere to get food on my hike.  However, I found latteria (which sell cheese), salumeria (which sell salami) and panificio (which sell bread).  Finding somewhere that will sell me a bread roll with cheese and salami in it was more of a challenge.  Finally, the next stop was to be the national museum.  However, the weather was taking a turn for the worse.  All morning it had been overcast and cool.  Now the clouds were descending and the wind was picking up.  I decided the national museum could wait and headed back to the hotel.   My confidence in my navigation skills was misplaced and it took me much longer than planned to get back.  On the plus side I did come across the Museo Laboratorio della Civilità Contadina (Museum Workshop of Peasant Civilisation).  I will have to make time to see this.

After a second nap, I headed out in search of dinner.  I went to the Pietra Viva, another recommendation from the hotel receptionist.  It was excellent.  I got there shortly after they opened and got one of the last free tables.  It serves typical food from the region. For antipasto I had pancotto - which is basically cooked bread.  It was some bitter green vegetable with torn up bread, bound together with egg.  It was delicious and clearly peasant food.  For primi I had cavatelli with beans and sausage.  Again, a peasant dish with beans for protein and (what would have been a small amount of cheap) meat for flavour.  I finished with an excellent tiramisu.  They also gave me a free digestif after my meal.  I think it was because of all the random solo dinners that wandered in off the street I was the only one who didn't insult their cuisine.  A German man ordered tagliatelle with mushrooms.  He asked for extra parmigiano cheese and proceed to dump the entire bowlful on his pasta, which he then ate with a knife and fork.  The American man insisted on having his meat cooked well done, although the waiter all but begged him to order it medium rare.

I'm now back at the hotel digesting.  It isn't raining but a cat (the cat?) has made a few exploratory yowls.  I will have to ignore it tonight.