Bari

This morning I traveled from Matera to Bari for a four night stay in the latter. Yes, the same Bari where I changed trains when travelling from Lecce to Matera. Getting to Matera required deviating from a circular route.

Today, I get back on that circle with my stop in Bari, the last stop before heading back to Rome for one night to catch my flight back home the next day. Sigh.

A Miracle

I miraculously avoided purgatory today. I hate to keep repeating myself to regular readers, but you never know when someone might inadvertently fall out of the internet sky and land on this page in my journal rather than at the at least somewhat interesting place elsewhere on the web that they hoped to find.

For their benefit, I’ll repeat that a purgatorial travel day is one that requires a single connection somewhere. A hellish travel day requires two or more connections,

Today was expected to be purgatorial. When I bought my ticket it clearly showed I had a five-minute connection in Altamura where I had to catch another train with a different train number. This didn’t surprise me because on the way from Bari to Matera on my earlier Lecce to Matera journey, that’s exactly what I had to do.

But when my train arrived at the Matera station just before my correct departure time, the electronic sign on the front and side of the train said “Bari Centale,” my final destination for the day. Screens on board showing the stops the train would make confirmed it.

So my two-train trip turned into a direct one.

It was a miracle. A miracle, I tell you! Clearly, a saint must have intervened. Or maybe I’m the saint, but an incompetent ecclesiastical bureaucrat forgot to tell me about my canonization.

You never know. It could happen. But, I hope not. My understanding is that you have to be dead to be made a saint. I definitely want to avoid dying while on this trip because Air Canada won’t give me a refund on the return portion of my ticket.

Matera to Bari

The route from Matera to Bari was identical to, but reversed from, the last two legs of my Lecce to Matera journey a couple of days ago, but without the changing trains in Altamura part. So I won’t repeat the description of the trip here.

If you want to know what today’s trip was like, go back to the Lecce to Matera post and read backwards the sections on the last two legs of that trip, skipping the bit about the connection. That’ll probably take you a long time because your brain will fight against an attempt to read a body of text back to front.

I’ll drop an ellipsis here in case you forget where you were in this post when you finally come back from the other one.

…

There. You found your way back. Great. I missed you while you were gone. Let’s move on.

In Bari

I arrived in Bari without incident and walked to my hotel, a 10 to 15 minute walk from the train station’s platform.

I think I made a mistake in my choice of hotel.

The hotel is nice enough. The room is a good size, clean, and laid out well. There’s an elegant driveway leading from the street to the hotel and a beautiful garden in the back of the property. My room is good, although simple. But the grounds of the hotel have a resort-like appearance.

When I looked at the website to choose my hotel in Bari, the hotel’s description said it is “located in Bari at 500 metres from the centre.”

Five hundred metres isn’t bad. It’s typically under a ten-minute walk even without rushing.

The problem is that 500 metres must be as the crow flies. I’m not a crow. I don’t fly. I’m a reasonably good walker for a man of my age, with the emphasis on “for a man of my age.” But I don’t fly. That’s for the birds. Besides, I’m afraid of heights.

My hotel is set back from a street that runs parallel to the railway tracks. The hotel is on the side of the street away from the tracks. A band of land between the tracks and the street is wide enough for, at different points along the street, small parking lots, what look like small railway utility buildings, and a small supermarket.

There’s landscaping between the hotel ond the street, setting it back a bit from the street. Between that and the fact that my room faces the other direction, toward the hotel garden, swimming pool, and parking lot, I don’t hear any trains even with the window open. At least, not so far.

But, never mind that. That’s not where I was going with this.

The centre of Bari is on the other side of the tracks. The closest way I could see to get to the other side is through a tunnel under the station, a ten minute or so walk away from the hotel., which I think is more than 500 metres in itself.

From there, it’s at a 20 minute or so walk to the old centre of Bari. Maybe they meant 500 metres to Bari Centrale, not the centre of Bari.

I’ll have to remember to ask at the hotel if there’s a shortcut that both Google Maps and I missed.

After I checked into the hotel, it was time for a late lunch. I pulled out Google Maps and looked for a decent restaurant. The closest one was about an eight minute walk. And, in general, restaurants look very thin on the ground around the hotel.

I rarely eat in hotel restaurants. I might once or twice this trip if I’m tired. I’m always tired, but it takes a special kind of tired to convince to eat in the hotel. We’ll see how it goes.

Bari Wandering

Despite the late lunch (a carbonara pasta and wine), I had some time to wander down into Bari’s old town, a little over a half-hour walk away from my hotel, and a bit less than that from the restaurant where I had lunch.

The first part of my time after lunch can’t really be called wandering. I made a beeline to a sight that my guidebook highly recommends, one of only two to which it gives a star in Bari, the Basilica di San Nicola.

Basilica di San Nicola

According to my guidebook, the basilica, built in the 12th century, is one of the first Norman churches erected in southern Italy. It was constructed specifically to house the bones of Saint Nicholas. Those bones hadn’t been in Bari. They were in Turkey. But they were stolen by local fishermen who brought them to Bari.

So, if you venerate the Basilica di San Nicola you’re honouring the work of thieves. But never mind that. The theft happened in 1087. The statute of limitations likely applies here.

Saint Nicholas? Yes, it’s that Saint Nicholas. He also works under the aliases of Father Christmas and Santa Claus. I’m not sure you can trust anyone who operates under aliases.

And now that I’ve been where (some of) his remains, or whatever is left of them, lie, I think I can finally put the myth to rest. Saint Nicholas, aka Father Christmas, aka Santa Claus, can’t possibly travel around the world with a flying sleigh pulled by flying reindeer distributing free presents to Christian children around the world on Christmas Eve. It’s not possible.

According to Wikipedia, Saint Nicholas died in the year 343, close to 17 centuries ago. Death makes it difficult to engage in even the most trivial of social engagements, let alone traveling around the word dropping off presents in one night.

Besides, you don’t have to spend any more than a few seconds to realize that it can’t be true, with or without Saint Nick’s death. Just think about it. How can a saint finance an operation like that? The reindeer probably work just for food. But I can’t imagine how hungry they’d get pulling a sleigh around the world. And how much can a sleigh go for? Sure, the flight option probably adds to the cost. But it’s the presents that aren’t affordable.

Either a very high percentage of naughty Christian kids who, for being naughty, only get lumps of coal from Santa, or it’s absolutely unaffordable. Even Elon Musk couldn’t afford it, particularly after he bought Twitter.

How could Father Christmas come up the necessary funds? License old guys to impersonate him in malls and encourage young children to sit on their laps. What kind of business is that? And why isn’t the morality squad investigating it?

And then there’s that already-mentioned being dead for more than a millennium and half thing.

So, kids, sorry. The Santa Claus myth is fake news.

And, really, that’s not such a bad thing. The Santa Claus of myth was such a bigot. He gave only to Christian kids. How many atheist, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist, etc., etc., etc. did he ever give gifts to? Not many, I can tell you that. He certainly never gave me one. Maybe—just maybe—he gave gifts to the children of his accountant and doctor, but that’s probably it.

But back to the basilica. The facade is handsome, but not dramatic. The interior is quite stark, predominantly minimally adorned stone columns and arches. But there is a nice painted ceiling.

Beneath the cathedral is the crypt, the tomb of St. Nicholas. It’s a lot of columns, with an altar over the saint’s tomb and some decorations behind. The tomb, altar, and some space around them are separated from the rest of the crypt and blocked off from the public by a metal, square lattice.

According to the basilica’s website (it’s in Italian; use the translate function of your browser if you, like me, need it), the tomb doesn’t contain all of Father Christmas’ bones, only about 65%. Apparently, before the thieves brought the relics to Bari, some of the bones had already been distributed to other churches. I’m reminded once again that ancient Christianity could be quite macabre at times.

The website also says that a few years ago, folks from the BBC dropped a probe into the tomb. They could see the skull taking a starring position with the other bones arrayed around it.

Then again, I imagine that bones from well more than 16 centuries ago probably look quite similar from one person to the next. How do we know they really are the bones of St. Nicholas? Maybe he’s still in living this world. Keep your hope alive, Christian kids. Keep your hope alive.

Real Bari Wandering

Enough with the non-wandering wandering.

On the way to the Basilica di San Nicola, from the train station to the start (or end if you’re going in the other direction) of Bari’s old town, I was walked along a wide pedestrian walkway that passed through a park. The sections before and after the park are lined with shops. One part of that contains high-end stores. I also walked along it on the way back from my wander.

There’s a perpendicular pedestrian promenade that, as best I can tell, marks the beginning (or end in the other direction) of Bari’s old town. That perpendicular promenade has palm trees and a relatively modern-looking horse statue.

The sea is immediately behind the basilica. I wandered back there and walked along the curving, wide promenade that runs along the shore. The seaward side of the promenade is mostly human-placed (as opposed to Mother Nature-placed or Santa Claus-placed) rocks and then the sea. It’s not particularly special, but very nice.

There is a small warren of narrow, old streets in front and to the sides of the basilica. I wandered through them. Close to the basilica they are mostly lined with small restaurants (more like snack bars) and souvenir shops. It is, after all, one of the major tourist areas of Bari.

Not particularly far from the basilica, they turn into mainly residential streets, many of them oozing character.

Updates

I wrote many of the earlier words of this post either on the train or at lunch. I have a couple of clarifications to a couple of things.

For one, I said that due to the dearth of nice restaurants in the area of my hotel, I might be eating in the hotel restaurant once or twice during the four nights I’m here. It will be at most once.

When I got back to my hotel from my wander through Bari, I asked about the restaurant. This must be primarily a business hotel. The restaurant is closed except for breakfast Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Today is Friday. I leave Tuesday. So if I visit the restaurant at all, it will just be Monday.

(Although, due to the lack of cafés near the hotel, I’ll eat breakfast at the hotel.)

I also asked the front desk if there are any restaurants within an easy walk that are nice. She recommended two that she said are primarily pizza places, but they also serve pasta. I’d already eaten lunch at one of them.

The hotel bar is open every day until 9:00 pm. It serves sandwiches and salads. I might go with that one night if I have a big lunch on one of my outings here. We’ll see how it goes.

The other clarification is I said that I thought the closest place to cross over the tracks is at the station. Walking back from my wander, using the station tunnel to cross under the tracks, I saw another set of stairs going down and headed like it goes under the tracks. It’s about halfway from the station to my hotel.

It looked extremely scuzzy. There was a lot of graffiti, no signage that I saw, and it looked little-used.

I meant to ask at the front desk when I got back from my walk if 1) it is indeed a way to cross under the tracks, and 2) if people who enter on one side tend to come out alive on the other, particularly, but not exclusively, after dark. But I forgot to ask.

I’ll definitely ask those questions before using it.

So ends today. I still haven’t decided what I’ll do tomorrow.

Update on the Update

I had dinner at the other of the two restaurants recommended by the hotel. It serves more than pizza and pasta and was very good.