The Traveling White Picket Fence: Calabria, Italy

REWIND… It’s July 4th weekend. While people are preparing for cookouts, watermelon, American flags, and fireworks, we are on the ferry bound for Calabria, Italy. In order to board the ferry, you must, of course, have a ticket. We drive into a line and people start jumping out of their cars to go buy a ticket. Greg was driving, so that left me to do the deed. At this point, my Italian is, well, I don’t know Italian. I can say hello, good-bye, I can point, and have become a master at charades. I stand in line at the ticket counter, which is really pointless because lines don’t mean much here. Three people jump ahead of me and while I’m standing at the counter a man behind me sticks his hand in front of me and yells over my shoulder effectively taking care of his business. I told the man I needed a ticket (I rehearsed the word for “ticket” over and over in my head while walking to the booth) and then he asks me a question. I feel that blank look come over my face. I know the feel of the look very well at this point because I get it quite often. In the end, I manage to buy a ticket that gets us across.

We drive onto the ferry and eat some terrible food on our 15 minute journey. After arriving in mainland Italy we look back at our island home. Strange feeling! We drive for a few hours and arrive at the agriturismo just in time for lunch! We sit down and they start bringing us food. No menu, no idea about what’s coming, just trusting that it will all work out ok! Boy does it work out ok! We ate some delicious food and I was very excited about what was to come during our stay. Our room is small with an attached bathroom. We are able to fit a bed, a cot, and a pack and play successfully in the room, what more do you need?

Having some time to kill before dinner (which started at 9pm), we headed for the beach. Everyone had a fun time, but Greg got water duty… it was too cold for me! We made our way back through the olive grove only to hear upon our return at the agriturismo, we didn’t have any hot water in our room! They assured us that if it wasn’t fixed by sometime tomorrow, they would move us to a different room. If a shower was necessary, we were free to use the outdoor shower area next to the pool. How kind!

The next day we took a drive trying to find a water park. We found it, but it didn’t open until August. That doesn’t work out very well when you are there in July. The manager at the agriturismo had told us about a nice town with a castle (not that unusual) so off we went. There’s not much to report… a nice town, great lunch, cool castle out in the water. There was still no hot water in our room, so we moved into a very nice room in the main building. Dinner, again, was amazing and this time we enjoyed our time with a family from Malta. It’s always fun to meet new people! We had a great weekend and I highly recommend staying at an agriturismo. The experience was unique, the food was great, the atmosphere was quaint, and you felt like family.

P.S.- Greg bought our return ticket!