Sassi

Having gotten our bearings, sort of, we drove out of Bari (Patra's sister city, I think) and on into the interior, stopping at Matera for a) purchase of an Italian USB modem (yes!), and b) a stop at the Pantaleone Azienda Agritouristico campground. The former entailed biding our time parked on the main drag of Matera until 4:30PM when the Wind store reopened after its 4-hour lunch break. The latter is (we hope) a typical Italian farm expanded to include a restaurant, hostel, and campground. The campground was actually fairly nice and reasonable, although the English spoken was pretty minimal. The restaurant had no menu--"cuisine traditionale." We were joined later by a pair of French RVs and then another from Spain. We spent the evening recovering from our voyage, but the next day we ventured back into Matera.

Modern-day Matera sits along a great limestone gorge in which people have been living, in caves, for some aeons. In 1952, the Italian government declared them unsafe and moved everyone to Matera, atop the gorge. The cave dwellings--Sassi--are now a World Heritage Site, many restored and an attraction of some note. Mel Gibson's Passion of Christ was filmed here, but we went to see Sassi anyway.

En route from Bari to Matera, we saw a number of these

interesting stone corballed structures out in the groves

The gorge and some of the dwellings

Across the gorge, mostly cattle nowadays



River at the bottom of the gorge



Interior of Casa Grotto, one of the restored family dwellings;

three rooms, actually; it looked pretty spacious to us; in

reality, Sassi was noted for its poverty and 50% infant

mortality rate; the plight of its residents was made known by

physician/writer Carlos Levi

The kitchen

Living area; common bowl from which food is served

One-car garage

More of the cave town

In there somewhere is St. Peter's church/cave

The campground Pantaleone Azienda Agritouristico; very
nice



Sassi/Matera is worth a stop on the way. If you have seen Cappadocia, however, you won't be impressed.

Farewell, Greece; Cruising the Adriatic

We had seen the sights we wanted to see in Greece and were anxious to move on to Italy. (In retrospect, we might have stayed warmer and drier by spending another week in the south of the Peloponnese.) So we drove up the west side--not the pretty side, I'd say--of the peninsula to Patra, where we planned to take the ferry to Bari, Italy. Patra looked like a scary town, not a place you'd want to linger. Even in the security-controlled port area, young jerks were trying to get at our vehicle. So it was with some relief that we boarded the ferry, the Superfast II--part of the Superfast fleet--after only half an hour in the port, and got ourselves and the Grey Wanderer ready for the not-so-superfast 15 and a half hour voyage. We embarked at 6PM and debarked in Bari at 8:30AM Italian time. The vessel was quite large and full of amenities, for sale, and the voyage was very smooth. A week later or even a few days later and it might not have been so smooth. Vicki brought her eye-shades and ear-plugs and was able to sleep much of the night. I couldn't find mine and suffered accordingly. (I did catch a bit of an apparently 50s movie bio of Verdi). But we made it just fine and just in time to see the last of sunny Italy for a few days. By nightfall temperatures had dropped into the 30s and rain was threatening. It's still February, and we are a couple hundred miles north of where we were in Greece.

The fortress above Patra; we wanted to get out of Patra

Typical port scene

Our ship, the Good Ferry Superfast II; note stylish tail-fins

The Grey Wanderer safely and securely parked; it was its

2nd longest voyage ever (counting the Atlantic, of course)

Leaving Patra

Farewell, Greece

The Snoring Lounge aboard the Superfast II

Arriving in Bari; we spent our first few hours in the port

parking lot, looking at maps and guides, planning our tour

of southern Italy

Olympia Museum

Olympia Museum; the Games are very old, older than

Clasical Greece, and it is amazing how much has survived

West pediment of Temple of Zeus: the battle between the

Lapiths and Centaurs (look it up)

East pediment: Pelops, founder of the Games, father of

Peloponnesians

Detail: a Lapith woman

Detail from the east pediment: the Seer

Nike of Paeonios: formerly on the triangular

pedestal in the sanctuary

And now, two of the utterly cool things in this museum

(reflecting my bias for the historical, I suppose): this is

Miltiades' helmet, from the Battle of Marathon; he had

presented it to the Games as an offering to Zeus

And this cup, found in the excavation of Pheidias'

workshop, bears the inscription "I belong to Pheidias"

A warrior bids farewell to wife and child

Among the hundreds of figurines found at Olympia

Olympia II

Along the row of Zanes, leading to the

Stadium, once statues of various cheaters

whose fines helped support the Games

Like every other religious site, Olympia was built on

top of someone else's site; here a neolithic site more recently

unearthed and explored

Remains of the Altar of Hera, where the Olympic Torch is lit

every two years (summer/winter)

Temple of Hera

Vicki at Hera's; note profusion of wild flowers; spring in this

part of the world

Olympic athletes were marinated in olive oil for both

training and competition; and used these tubs to clean off

afterwards

Another view of the gym and wild flowers

Site of Pheidias' workshop; a Christian church in the 6th

century

Bases of the colonnaded Leonideion, a large hotel for

officials, VIPs

Parting view of the Stadium, from the slopes of Kronos Hill

c

Olympia I

We spent Sunday morning touring the archaeological site of the Olympic Games, Archaia Olympia. The first recorded Olympic Games occurred in 776 BC and ran an unbroken string every four years until 393 AD, when the Christians shut them down, along with various other pagan institutions. Initially, and for the first several hundred years, the Games provided a month-long truce every four years, allowing athletes and spectators to journey to sacred Olympia (birthplace of Zeus). The main occupation of the various Greek city-states, history tells us, was making war on each other and on anyone else within reach; so the Games were a nice respite. But then in Hellenistic times and later under Roman administration the Games changed, becoming less a Pan-Hellenic gathering than another spectacle. Sic transit, Gloria. Anyhow, the Games were forgotten, the site silted up under 3-4 meters of mud, and it was not re-discovered until the 18th century. Most of the archaeological work was done in the 19th century.

Kronos Hill, a pathetic little near-hillock where Zeus was

said to have been born (Kronos his dad; it's a long

disgusting story), overlooks the Olympic sanctuary

In the sanctuary, entering the gymnasium area, where the

athletes trained

The Phillipeon, a monument to Philip of Macedon, erected

by himself, celebrating his conquest of Greece

Temple of Hera



Alongside the Temple of Zeus; 6th century earthquakes

toppled pretty much everything sizeable



Pedestal of the statue of Nike (victory); we'll

see her in the Museum

Temple of Zeus remains



The Temple of Zeus housed Pheidias' colossal statue of

Zeus, one of the Seven Wonders; it was later carted off

to Byzantium and there lost in a blaze; this representation,

which I like, was in a bar in Olympia...Sic transit, etc.



Remains of vaulted entry to Olympic Stadium



 

OK, so the Greeks did know how to build an arch



Starting line in Olympic Stadium; intact,

seriously, after all these years; I'll spare you

the photo of me, this time only, lined up and

awaiting the starting gun

Olympic Stadium, with Kronos Hill in the background; no

seats, no skyboxes, nothing