Reggio Calabria/ Matera 3/23

This morning we took the 20 minute ferry over to Reggio Calabria where we picked up our rental car.  We weren’t sure what to expect when picking up the car because they never told us what type we were to have.  The man pulled up our car and it was a Mercedes-Benz!  Of course it is not a really big one or anything and it is a lower class one, but it is sill a Benz lol.  We hopped in the car and headed off…..in the wrong direction of course!  We turned around quickly and decided that using the navigation system would be a good choice.  It has really come in handy so far.  We drove for about 2 hours up the west coast of the “toe” and stopped for lunch in a small town.  We found a local market where we stocked up on bread, fruit, and water so that we could have lunch in the car most days and eat out for dinner.  We didn’t stop again for an hour or so until we found the east coast!  We actually pulled over to the side of the road this time to go down by the water.  I could not believe how blue the water was!  The place we stopped at was very rocky but it was still nice to see the water and feel the breeze.  Matera was around 2 hours longer so we headed off again.  When we got to Matera, the owner of our bed and breakfast wasn’t at the place, so we parked the car and walked into town.  The city was more modern than any I have seen so far.  We were a little confused because we went to Matera to see the Sassi which are old caveman houses carved into the rock.  We asked a man where they were at and he brought us all the way there.  The Sassi are built into the cliff that is over a large valley.  On the side of the valley that Matera is on, the caves are more like actual houses but they are still made of stone and people actually live in them.  On the other side of the valley, the caves are just holes in the cliff.  The film The Passion of the Christ with Mel Gibson was filmed in the town of the Sassi.  We did lots of exploring through the Sassi and looked at many churches.  The city was interesting because it was complete opposites with a Paleolithic city on one end of town and a modern city on the other end of town.  The driving we did today is the most we will do in one day but we haven’t been in a car in a long time, or driven in a long time, so it was fine.  Not to mention, we were driving along the coast so there was no complaining.