Lovely Lecce

nother very nice thing about San Cataldo is that it's near a lot of other interesting towns, particularly Lecce.

Danny and I visited this famous baroque city during our last trip to the Italian South, some twenty-five years ago. We stopped by on our way to somewhere else, and we weren't impressed. I was expecting beautiful baroque buildings, but everything we saw looked plain and 19th-century. We had a nice lunch in a restaurant in an empty square and drove on to our next destination.



We must have been in the wrong part of town back then, because when we visited Lecce this time we saw madly ornamented buildings, in the area's trademark golden stone, all over the place.

The insides of some of the churches embraced the same aesthetic. Some people find this stuff vain and insincere, but I can't get enough of it myself.

I forgot to write down which church this was in, but it hardly matters.

There's also a big Roman amphitheater right in the middle of town. Sant'Onorzo, the patron saint of Lecce, is standing on the pillar to the right. He has his back to the amphitheater, perhaps because the Romans beheaded him.

Our favorite place in Lecce was the Museo Faggiano, a private home whose owner, while doing some sewer repairs in 2001, discovered a network of tombs, tunnels, wells, and storage rooms below the house. After seven years of archeaological excavations, the place was opened to the public. It is a fascinating (and claustrophobic) window into life in medieval Italy. I kept imagining what it must have smelled like when all those little tunnels and rooms were full of sweaty Knights Templar and monks and recently buried corpses.

In the part that used to be a cloister, the monks (or nuns?) apparently used broken pottery to decorate the walls, or just fill in cracks. I loved the way that looks--very Urban Outfitters.

If you want to see more of the underground rooms, the museum's web siteweb site has much better photos than I was able to take.

Danny and I had such a good time there we even succumbed to the impulse to take vacation photos of each other. 

Learning to like San Cataldo

The temperature dropped from the mid-90s to the mid-80s during our second week in San Cataldo, which made the place seem a bit more like a beach town and less like a circle of hell. I decided I ought to try to appreciate this bit of Adriatic coast, instead of being so insistently negative.

After all, the place we were staying was nice enough, perfectly comfortable even if it wasn't particularly photogenic.



The front garden was pretty, although we only saw it on our way in and out.

And some of the streets nearby, full of flowering oleander and, behind the walls, bigger, fancier houses, were almost glamorous.

The skies at sunset were beautiful. (The sun rising over the water was probably even lovelier, but I never got up that early.)







And being by the water is an undeniable pleasure. There's a nice promenade and bike path along the shore in the center of town.

There's even a little lighthouse, though I never saw the light on. Maybe that's because it was never cool enough to be foggy while we were there.

But...I can't not say it...San Cataldo could be a lot nicer. Many of the streets are drab; the walls guarding the houses, grimly utilitarian and often grafittied, make the place feel like a prison yard.

And if I were one of the many realtors trying to sell San Cataldo properties, I'd be working to change the garbage collection system. Instead of picking up the spazzatura at people's houses, the town maintains collection bins every other block or so. Inevitably, the bins overflow and the trash spreads out up and down the street. This is on top of the litter everywhere that I keep complaining about.

Then there's all the evidence of recession. The many, many shuttered and boarded-up buildings and stores along the shore cast a bit of a post-apocalyptic pall. 

At least someone's looking out for all the feral dogs and cats. I saw several of these little cafes around town.

Speaking of food, we had some good meals in San Cataldo. My favorite place was La Rizzara da Domenica, a funky little seafood restaurant by the water.

 It's the kind of place that makes no attempt at charm, which is what's charming about it. We ordered fried calamari and fried sardines. The proprietor told me that they only had enough sardines for a half-portion, so she was going to give me...something else, which I couldn't understand.


Here's the serving of sardines she found inadequate:

 And here are the fried baby squid she gave me so I wouldn't starve:

Nonetheless, Danny and I both felt a bit peckish after all that, so we shared a plate of spaghetti with mussels and clams. This plate is my half.

So for all San Cataldo's flaws, it has a lot of good qualities, too. Not least among them that it's in Italy.

That's what I like

One of my favorite things, right up there with medical museums, is the horror and gore of an old-fashioned Catholic church. Which puts Italy's churches almost on a par with Italy's food among my reasons for really loving this country. Churches here have an over-the-top exuberance that makes Liberace look like a Swedish modernist, and great art, outsider art, and medical illustration are all entwined with each other.

The other day we drove over to Galatina, a little town near here, one of the country's zillions of adorable little burgs with a medieval center that makes you reach for your camera. Even if you're not a very adept photographer.

We stopped in at the Basilica di Santa Caterina to have a look. It turns out it was dedicated to the saint because the noble patron of the place reportedly visited her tomb on Mount Sinai, bit off one of her fingers, and brought it back to Galatina. A relic that valuable had to have a basilica to house it.

The church, which dates from the 1300s, is plain on the outside...

...but its interior, and that of the attached cloister, are a riot of 15th- and 16th-century frescoes. And the insides live up to the promise of the finger-biting story.

Photos weren't allowed and I wasn't able to evade the watchman in order to take a picture of the Noah's ark panel, which shows the ark surrounded by the gray, bloated bodies of dead sinners, or the panel showing Death on horseback (or is it Plague?) laying waste to rich and poor alike.

But I did sneak around a corner and get a shot of this peculiarly gruesome crucifixion.

And I also managed to get one of this really alarming martyrdom of St. Agatha. As a bonus, the diocesan museum next door...

 ...boasts a reliquary housing what's supposed to be one of St. Agatha's breasts.

The cloister next door is covered with frescoes, too, and less carefully policed.. I'd love to know which saint this is supposed to be. Talk about nasty women!

There are also depictions of the Virtues. This one, of a woman stabbing herself in the chest, represents Patience.

That is exactly what patience feels like when you don't feel capable of having any.

Out for a swim

After several days spent mostly hiding in our air-conditioned rental, we decided we were morally obliged to venture out for a swim. We were at the beach, after all.

We waited until late in the day, around six 'o'clock, when the sun was low and we wouldn't feel so much like that chicken in Paolo's picture of the spit roast.

We walked up the road to the nearest public beach. All along the shore here are two kinds of beaches: public ones, which are just a stretch of sandy shoreline, and "lidos," where you pay to rent a chair, an umbrella, a lounger, or all of the above and get to enjoy additional amenities, such as a bar and a lifeguard.

A lido at the end of the day

The cost for a chair and umbrella seems to range from 4 euros to 20. Right now the private beaches are pretty empty, but presumably they'll fill up in August, when everyone in Italy is on vacation. We figured a public beach was good enough, especially since the waves are barely ripples.

Even on a windy day the waves are tiny

Just the prospect of having to walk a quarter mile to the beach and then sit on the sand made me feel sorry for myself. Not for the first time, I realized how my parents' house on the Jersey Shore, now just a memory, has spoiled me for life when it comes to beaches.

The sand on Long Beach Island is soft and clean (except for that one year when all the syringes washed in). The waves are big enough for body-surfing but not so big as to be scary, the water clear and refreshing, and there are lifeguards on duty to look out for sharks and undertow. Best of all, our family's oceanfront house was just a few steps from the water. So if you wanted to swim, or suntan, or visit with some friends who were already down by the water, you strolled out to the beach. And when you'd had enough sun or swimming or conversation, you went back inside. It was like having a swimming pool that happened to be the Atlantic Ocean.

Now we had to worry about what to bring and leave on the beach while we were in the water (answer: nothing but the house key and a towel). I also wondered how our immense American bathing suits would be regarded by the locals, who regardless of age and physique generally wear the smallest bikinis they can find.

The latter turned out to be a non-problem, since by the time we got to the beach everyone else had apparently gone off to have an aperitif. We set down our things and headed into the water.

Unlike the Atlantic, it was warm--over 80 degrees, I would guess. I started wading out, trying to avoid the thick clumps of seaweed growing here and there. I walked and walked and walked, but the water didn't seem to be getting any deeper. Seventy feet from shore and it was still at knee level.

I looked over my shoulder to check Danny's progress and saw him on the shore, waving urgently. Had he seen a shark? I turned and waded back.

Evidently some of the construction rubble we'd spotted further down the beach was also in the water. A few feet from shore Danny had stumbled on a concrete block hidden by seaweed and cut open his knee.

We hurried back home, Danny's leg bleeding slowly but steadily. Luckily it wasn't a deep cut, and we had bandages and ointment on hand. He's fine and the cut is healing nicely.

But we haven't been back in the water since. I keep thinking we ought to, but the prospect just isn't very appealing.

Another dream dies

The reason we came to Italy, aside from the food, was to move ahead on our efforts to get dual citizenship. That part of the program was completed while we were in Montagano.

The reason Danny and I are sticking around for a few weeks more is because Danny has for some time been dreaming of buying a house on Italy's southern Adriatic coast.

He liked the idea of being somewhere besides the U.S., for reasons I'm sure I don't have to explain. (Pogroms and Nazis figure into it.)  He also liked the fact that the weather in this part of Italy is hot and dry, not unlike that of his favorite place, the California desert. And he particularly liked that real estate in Italy generally, and here in particular, is cheap compared to California. He'd seen on line that you can buy a three-bedroom house here, a short walk from the beach, for about a quarter of what a hovel in the Bay Area would cost you. How could he not be interested?

I was more resistant to the idea, mostly because it's so far away from my real life and getting to and from this place seemed like a lot of hassle and expense, including 20 hours of air travel plus a six-hour train ride from Rome. But I agreed to add a couple of weeks to our trip to spend some time here and see if the sun and sand might change my mind.

If you read the previous post, you know that nature hasn't been particularly cooperative. The oppressive heat of our first week here made me homesick for the gray, cool summers of El Cerrito. Undeterred, Danny arranged for us to go see one particular house that he's been eyeing for months now, a three-bedroom, two-bath, fully modernized place that's a five-minute walk from the water and is on the market for 110,00 euros--about $125,000 at today's exchange rate. If you know anything about California real estate prices, you know that's about a tenth of what something equivalent would cost in the Golden State.

On Wednesday, June 28, we drove over to the next town to see Danny's dream house. The Italian real estate agent was on hand, but he didn't speak much English, whereas the owners, a very nice British couple, were on hand and did, so they showed us around. They looked to be in our age bracket, perhaps a few years older (or maybe they just spend more time in the sun).

The house was lovely, nicely arranged, with air-conditioning in all three bedrooms and a well-equipped kitchen. They're selling it fully furnished, down to the attractive array of dishes and pots. I winced inwardly when I saw the hope in their eyes as we came in the door, and again when they admitted that it has been on the market for two years.

They said that the oppressive heat--it was again in the mid-90s--was uncharacteristic for June; usually it only gets that hot in August. They told us the low (by California standards) property taxes, 800 euros a year, and described all the improvements they'd made. They assured us that, unlike many houses in the area, theirs had documents proving that the house had been built legally on land with clear title. I imagine those are some of the reasons the house is priced a bit higher than some similar ones in the neighborhood.

We thanked them for showing us around, told them--sincerely--that their house was great, and said we'd be in touch. As soon as we were alone I said to my husband, "Face it--we're too old for this."

He agreed. "I liked starting out with a new place, in a new place," he said. "It would make us feel young. But now that we're here, I don't think we have the energy for this."

Nice as the house was, it and the whole area--the weather, the look of the streets, even the food--weren't nice enough to make us forget, even momentarily, how far away this is from our friends, our children, our medical providers, from all our support systems, and how much effort and stress it would take to buy a place and the keep it going. Twenty or thirty years ago buying a house in an Italian beach town might well have looked like an adventure; now it just looks like an ordeal.

We ran into the agent the next day in Lecce and told him, in clumsy Italian, that though we'd really liked the house we'd decided we were just too old to buy something so far from our home base. He looked like he understood, and he didn't disagree with us.

If anyone reading this is feeling more peppy, here's the listing.

It really is a very nice house. And they say the beach nearby is marvelous. But we didn't even bother walking over to look at the beach; we just went back to our air-conditioned rental and took a nap.

Welcome to San Cataldo

When we left Montagano we headed to Barletta, which is about halfway between where we were coming from and where we were going to, namely, the beach town of San Cataldo.

Italy's historic coastal towns all seem to have invested heavily in fortifications. Barletta has a gigantic citadel that's now surrounded by a public park, where everyone does their evening passegiatta. Including, for that one evening, us.

Barletta is on the southern end of Italy's Adriatic coast, at about where the ankle strap would hit, just above the heel.





San Cataldo, where we are now, is well down on the heel proper. It's a modern suburb of the venerable town of Lecce, a bit northwest of it and right on the water.

The next day, Monday, June 26, we arrived in San Cataldo and took possession of our rental, a little semi-detached house that's about 10 minutes by foot to the beach. But our walk to the beach was a bit disheartening.

First of all, San Cataldo, like much of Southern Italy, is awash in garbage. People live behind walls, and evidently don't have many compunctions about tossing bottles, wrappers, and construction waste pretty much anywhere, as long as it's not inside their own compound. Here's the street outside our house.

The weather conspired against San Cataldo, too. We expected hot and dry, but for the first several days here the temperature was in the mid- to high 90s, stifling in the shade and punishing in the sun. I gather this is what it's often like in August, but it was unseasonably hot for June.

The beach itself didn't inspire instant love, either. Parts of the shoreline are pretty, and the water is a lovely blue-green.

But there are no waves to speak of, and the water is warm, full of plant life, and kiddie-pool shallow unless you walk very far out. During our first overheated week here the sea air didn't offer much relief; the breeze coming off the water felt almost as hot and dry as the wind from inland.

Moreover, the beach is ringed by the same trash that washes up on the roadside. And of course some of it gets into the water, too.

Meanwhile, much of the beach seems to be landfill, or perhaps a dumping ground for construction waste from all the building that's been going on around here, much of it left uncompleted.

In sum, San Cataldo and I did not get off to a great start.

Faifoli one more time

Maria was distressed to hear that, though we'd been to Santa Maria di Faifoli twice, we'd never seen the inside. Why didn't we come to the church before we took off on Sunday, just after Mass, while the church was still open. She and Paolo would be there and could show us around.

Such is my appetite for Catholic churches that I said yes. So after we'd loaded Rita up with a giant bag of groceries that we'd bought and never gotten around to eating, we drove out to Faifoli and waited for the service to be over so that we could insinuate our godless selves into the building and at least see the interior.

First we had to pose for some photos with our friends. I particularly liked the pizzazz of Maria's Sunday outfit. I need a bit more Italian in my clothing choices, I think.

I'd read enough about the church to know not to expect much from the interior. It's pretty basic.

However, I was pleased to see this rendition of the Virgin Incoronata in a tree, a vision that appeared to someone in the grotto nearby and that apparently prompted the church to be built. It reminded me of some of those giant kitsch appropriations that Jeff Koons used to do.  It also reminded me that we met at least two women named Incoronata, a name that delights me. 

And here to the right is Pope Celestine. Since he isn't dressed as a pope, and he doesn't look like he's in his 80s, this must show him in happier days, when he was a humble monk who hadn't yet ascended to the papal throne and then committed "il gran rifiuto" (the great rejection) by walking away from it. Still, he looks like he knows what lies ahead.

Since our children were obsessed with the stray dog they dubbed Abbandonato, I was also interested to see that the church's few ornaments include a statue of San Rocco, who was saved from plague by a dog who brought him bread to eat and healed his sores by licking them.

Then it was time for one more round of cheek kisses and heartfelt good-byes. We drove down out of the hills of Molise and headed for the Adriatic.

Good-bye to Montagano

By Saturday afternoon (we're still back on Saturday, June 24, god help me) the kids had left for Rome (Max and Stephany) and Naples (Lina and Steven) and the various adventures that lay beyond. Danny and I settled in to pack for our departure the next day and to finish cleaning up the apartment where six people had been sleeping, bathing, cooking, and eating for two weeks. The children had done a good job of tidying their areas, but that still left quite a bit of scrubbing and sorting to be done.

We also had a bagful of leftover pizza to get through, plus assorted cheeses, salad greens, and other food that had to be disposed of. Some of it went into the garbage, and some of it, the best things, we piled up as a big gift to Rita and her family. And some of it, of course, we ate ourselves, including most of the pizza. (Maria was right--it was even better reheated in the oven.)

That night we went down to the Circolo for one last drink and to make final arrangements with Rita about keys, garbage, and other logistics. Claudia and Maria turned up, and everyone got a little sentimental about our imminent departure.

(The photos show, top to bottom, Claudio, Maria, and Rita. Fernando was across the room, participating in a very lively game of cards. Raucous card games and beer drinking seem to be the raison d'etre of the Circolo Unione.)

I wish I had a movie of Maria and Claudio talking. Their English is heavily accented, flavored with both their native Italian and with the Italo-American inflections they picked up during their years living in Queens, NY. Plus they both have, in spades, that Italian genius for comedic gestures and grimaces that makes even the most pedestrian marital bickering sensationally funny.






Apparently the Montaganesian appetite for partying had been merely whetted by all the celebrations during our two-week visit. Rita and Maria informed us that the next day, Sunday, they were all planning a meal out in the woods, with an open-air spit roast. Surely we'd like to stay another day so we could get in on it. Please, please, wouldn't we stick around till Monday?

We were tempted, because we knew the food would be great. But we had already paid for a room in Barletta, over toward the Adriatic, and our bags were all packed, and we were still trying to digest the pizza from the day before, and I wasn't sure I could take one more Montaganesi blow-out. Furthermore, I was afraid that if we didn't stop accepting these invitations we'd never leave. So we declined, with great regret.

Later I regretted it even more. The redoubtable Paolo posted a photo on Facebook showing the barbecue. The main offering, aside from a very healthy-looking chicken, was a banquet-sized array of torcinelli, those fabled skewers of lamb innards wrapped in milk-fed intestines.

 Now I have to go back to Montaganesi, just to taste that dish.