Lecce to Matera

If you’ve been following along, you might remember from my post about my expedition from Salerno to Lecce that I said I had another hellish travel day coming up. Today’s the day. I traveled from Lecce to Matera.

You might also recall that my official definition of a hellish travel day is one that involves two or more connections. (A purgatorial travel day is one with just one connection.) Today’s journey involves a train from Lecce to Bari. Another train from Bari to Altamura. And then a third train from Altamura to my final destination of the day, where I’ll spend two nights, Matera.

None of the individual trains were scheduled to take all that long, about an hour and three-quarters for the Lecce to Bari train, an hour and ten minutes for Bari to Altamura, and about 20 minutes for Altamura to Matera.

In total, with connection times, the schedule called for a total trip time from Lecce to Matera of about four hours. That doesn’t sound too bad, does it?

Oh, you know how I said hellish trips have two or more connections. Add a few Satanic bonus points if two of the connecting trains, or whatever the mode of transportation, do not arrive and then leave at the same place.

The Lecce to Bari train arrives at Bari Centrale, Bari’s central station. The train from Bari to Altamura also departs from Bari Centrale, but Bari has two Bari Centrale stations, just plain old Bari Centrale, for the mainline Trenitalia trains, and Bari Centrale FAL. F A L are the initials of a different train company (I believe they run narrow gauge trains) that runs the two trains that will, combined, take me from Bari to Matera.

Google Maps told me it’s about a five minute walk between the two stations. I have about a half-hour connection in Bari. (Despite the second two trains being with another company, I was able to book all three trains on a single ticket from Trenitalia. That’s the connection Trenitalia gave me.)

Lecce to Matera: Lecce to Bari Leg

The first part of the Lecce to Bari leg of my Lecce to Matera journey looked strikingly similar to the whole last leg of my Salerno to Lecce odyssey a few days, that being Brindisi to Lecce. That’s not surprising. The first stop on the train from Lecce to Bari was Brindisi.

Beyond Brindisi, the landscape was similar, but more pronounced, if that makes any sense whatsoever. There were lots of olive trees, even more dense than from Lecce to Brindisi. And there were fewer vineyards.

The land was still reasonably flat, but the further on we got, the more it began to roll a bit. And I even saw some modest hills in the background.

And as we got closer to Bari there were some less than modest, some would say boastful, hills off in the near distance. One might even call them small mountains.

Further on, the small mountains disappeared and the hills regained their modesty. And I spotted a few vineyards and some farms growing vegetable matter, plants that remain relatively close to the ground, at least at this point in the growing season.

Of course, around the stops there tended to be at least moderately dense residential and industrial areas. I’m not railway exec, but I think it’s generally considered a bad business practice to put stations somewhere where they’d serve only wildlife. You’d be surprised at how often wildlife try to sneak on trains without paying their fares.

At one point, not all that much past Brinidisi, the train came to a stop on an insignificant bridge over a small stream running by scrubland. Apart from the bridge and the concrete channel the stream ran through at points, the locale showed no signs of civilization.

The train stayed there for more than ten minutes. During that time, an announcement came on the speaker system to tell passengers in Italian and English that this is not a station stop. Duh. Thanks. A quick look out the window told me that.

Trenitalia has an online train tracking service. At that point, we were already three minutes late. When the train started moving again and the tracking system picked it up, the system told me I’d be arriving in Bari Centrale, Trenitalia’s Bari Centrale, 15 minutes late. All of a sudden my connection didn’t look so comfortable. What, me worry?

The train sped up. I checked a couple more times and the tracking system got closer to the original scheduled arrival time. As it happened, we arrived only three minutes late.

Before the train arrived in Bari, I pulled out my phone and got a walking route between the two Bari Centrale stations so I wouldn’t have to fumble with it at the station. I don’t know what I was looking at when it previously told me it was a five-minute walk. Now it told me it was just two minutes.

Google Maps was wrong about that too. The two stations are essentially in the same block. It took me less than two minutes to walk between the two. I ended up with plenty of time to catch my next train—Bari to Altamura—on my trek from Lecce to Matera.

You’ll hear more here about Bari in a couple days because I’ll be back to spend some time there.

Lecce to Matera: Bari to Altamura Leg

The Bari to Altamura leg of the Lecce to Matera expedition was unexciting and uneventful. The train seems to serve mainly commuters, and a lot of them. It was quite full out of Bari, but it thinned out a little after a few stations.

Stops are frequent near Bari, passing through residential clusters and industrial areas in the early part of the trip.

Further on, there were groves. I’m less confident that these were olives than I was with the groves in the Lecce to Bari leg, but they might have been. Then again, I suck at identifying types of trees. I’m pretty sure that what I identified as olive trees in the earlier part of the trip weren’t maple or palm trees. But I wouldn’t trust me to narrow it down to olives if I were you. But I’m not you, which is probably to my detriment.

The distance between Altamura and the stop before it is considerably longer than the spacing of the earlier stops.

The land throughout this leg was relatively flat.

I only had an eight-minute connection in Altamura. The train to Matera was already in the station on another platform when I arrived. I walked briskly with my luggage, climbed down a set of stairs, walked briskly again to the next platform, plodded up the stairs, and clambered on to the train. I was on board for three or four minutes before it pulled out. So, that was a good connection.

Lecce to Matera: Altamura to Matera Leg

The Altamura to Matera leg of the Lecce to Matera expedition was shorter than the other two legs. It started to get a little more hilly, but not back to particularly braggadocios hills. I was expecting hills. In fact, I was surprised I had passed only a few, mostly modest, hilly sections to this point in today’s travel. I’d seen pictures of Matera. Its old town is built into the upper portion of a high, steep gorge. Where was that, I wondered.

Something I learned as the train got closer to Matera is that it’s not a small town. There are two Matera stops before mine, Matera Centrale, and one after. I arrived at my stop roughly on schedule.

Matera Centrale is in the newish part of Matera. But Matera is famous for its old town. Very old town. The station, while not huge, is very modern and clean. I had about a 20-minute walk from the station to my hotel in the old, very old, part of Matera.

The last part of the walk from the station involved climbing down a lot of old stone steps with my luggage. I’m old. Enough said.

I arrived at my hotel at about three in the afternoon, plenty of time to check in and go for a walk through Matera’s very old town.

All in all, it wasn’t really a hellish travel day. But it had two connections so I can’t change that classification. My hands are tied.

Matera

Before I jump into the narrative, let me start with this about Matera.

Que bello. Que absolutely bello. Que absolutely freaking bello.

Ralph Waldo Emerson is reputed to have said, “It’s not the destination, it’s the journey.” The perpetually annoying “they” often repeat that. I hope their loved ones convince them to seek professional help. They’re crazy.

It wasn’t the journey from Lecce to Matera. It was very definitely the destination, Matera.

Let me get to the principal plot point of this story. My hotel room is a cave. Not a Disney recreation of a cave. A cave.

That’s what Matera is most famous for. Caves.

For tonight and tomorrow, feel free to call me Caveman Joel.

When I checked into the hotel—in the reception area, which is a cave—the reception person took me next door to the large room where they serve breakfast, which is included in the hotel rate. The breakfast room is a cave that used to be a cave church.

She told me when the church was consecrated. I think it was the 13th century, but I might be misremembering by a century or two and making it more recent than it is. But when you’re talking about that far back, what’s a few hundred years between friends?

They also serve wine, cocktails, and hors d’oeuvres in that room or out on wood tables in front of the breakfast room and overlooking a beautiful gorge in the afternoon to early evening. The alcohol and food are not included in the room rate.

According to the reception person’s introduction to the hotel and its history, people lived in caves in the area up until only 60 years ago. On a geological scale, that’s right now to I don’t know how many orders of approximation. Even if you look at just the timescale of human evolution, it’s still now to a several orders of approximation.

When I think of people living in caves I think of the Stone Age. Although, to be honest, I think mostly of “The Flintstones.” However, maybe I’m wrong, but I don’t think “The Flintstones” accurately reflected life in the Stone Age. You just can’t trust what you see on television.

But enough about “The Flintstones.” (How old do you have to be to have any idea what “The Flintstones” was?)

I forget where I heard this, it might have been from my oft-cited regular reader, but I found corroboration of it through an online search that led me to a story in the New Yorker. Apparently, Mussolini hated that people were still living in caves in Matera. He thought it made Italy look outdated and backward.

It did, but really? He was perfectly okay with the world viewing Italy as a brutal fascist country of his doing. But people living in caves? That was too much of a blow to Italy’s reputation. Yeah, right.

A later government did push people out of the caves of Matera about 60 years ago,. Back then, the caves didn’t have electricity, water, or sewage.

Today, my cave has all that, including a toilet, a bidet, a sink, a big bathtub, a separate shower, heating, air conditioning, and good WiFi. My room has electric lights, but there were also multi-day candles burning in my cave when I arrived.

Wandering Matera

For the time I had in Matera this afternoon, I wandered. Just wandered.

My untrustworthy memory notwithstanding, I’m entirely confident that I have never seen anything like old town Matera. Not even close.

I originally thought I wouldn’t come here. I’d seen it mentioned in my guidebook. It sounded unique, but I didn’t think it would be worth the diversion from the route around the rest of southern Italy that I wanted to see.

But then the above- and often-cited regular reader strongly recommended that I go. She’s never been, but she knew a lot more about it than I did before this trip.

Now that I’m here, I’m in awe. I can’t begin to tell you how happy I am that she, with the help of someone who shall remain even more anonymous, talked me into coming.

I’m absolutely, positively in awe. I haven’t been here long yet, but I’m already thrilled I came. I’m fairly certain that when I leave I’m going to be disappointed that I booked only two nights, one full day, here and not more.

When I step out the wooden door of my cave I face a view of a great gorge. Across the way, in the mixed rock and green steep slope on the other side, there are more caves. Those look, from the distance, rough, bare bones, and abandoned.

Walking around the old town of Matera, I saw more caves that have been turned into restaurants and hotels,

All of the old town is on one side of the slope of the gorge. The new town is at top, so little of it is visible from the old town. Pretty much the full sweep of the vista is either the unsettled opposite side of the gorge, or the old town on this side of it. It’s absolutely beautiful.

The old town isn’t all caves. Its streets are also lined with buildings of stone-block construction. That having been said, as you can see from the picture of the entrance to my cave above, it’s not always easy to tell what’s a cave and what’s a stone-block building. The entrances to the caves on the town-side of the gorge have stone-block fronts on them to cover up the hole into the cave and create someplace to put a lockable door. You have to look to see if the stone block wall is pretty much right up against the hill to tell if it’s the entrance to a cave rather than a free-standing building.

Also, in my cave. the walls and ceiling are mostly stone block rather than raw rock. That creates flat walls and a perfectly vaulted ceiling. However, there is one small section that does have a rough rock ceiling.

There is a large part of the old town further along the gorge that I didn’t walk to. It looked from a distance to be more of the same. I happened to overhear a tour guide pointing at it and telling her small group of English-speaking charges that it is going to be left abandoned as far as restaurants, hotels, and residences go and it will, instead, be turned into an archaeologic park. Her use of the future tense made me think it might be blocked off, but I don’t know.

While I mainly wandered this afternoon, I did take a look in a church I stumbled on, the Chiesa di San Pedro Caveoso. My guidebook tells me it’s the only church in the sassi of Matera, the areas with the caves, that isn’t in the rock of the hill.

The church was built in 1300, but according to my guidebook, it has a 17th century Romanesque-baroque facade. Inside, it’s a simple church, but it has a wood ceiling with frescoes painted on it.

Tomorrow I’ll hit more of the named sights. I can’t wait, but I must somehow.