Sunday

Not a lot to add today. It was check-out day from our place in Salerno, and then a 3+ hour drive to our interim stop here in Cosenza. Sunday is a good day to travel since almost everything is closed in Italy. That would be a fixed piece of advice I'd offer for anyone looking to visit Italy.



So this gives you an idea of where we are on the map. We could have driven further, but the plan had been to make sure that I had time to take a bike ride today, so this became the stopping-off town. It's very blue-collar-ish, with lots of 6-8 story high-rise apartment buildings. From my bike ride and our subsequent drive around town, there's little to distinguish the place.

There's an Old Town section that I rode through and where 2 and I went back to have a glass of wine, but it is really just OLD.


This is not my pic, but it easily could have been. (I had my mini-digi, not my iPhone, so my pic's are not up-load able today.) Anyway, the Old Town has pretty well got away from the locals. It's a slum, at best. Even the church at the top of the hill (out of this photo) is rundown.

The drive from Salerno was on the A-3, this region's equivalent to an Interstate. I've never traveled on a road with as many tunnels. Much more mountain-y down this way than what I had expected. Several large valley's. The A-3 had several sections under serious re-building. The normal flow was two lanes per side, but there were multiple times where it was one lane each way using just one side of the road. Just like I-80.


An interesting factoid that I surmised from the day's trip...they seem to NAME their bridges in Italy. Each one with a proper name. Not a number.

We're staying in a very conventional, Western-style hotel of 7-8 floors that 2 says was once a Holiday Inn. Since we're just here for the convenience, and are not expecting a lot of culture, this hotel works just fine. They even speak Inglese' at the front desk!



My bike ride around town was un-eventful. I mostly wanted to get in a ride and checkout the surroundings. Virtually all of the shops and eating establishments in town were closed. Very little traffic. The Italians make an effort to lay out their streets in a non-grid pattern...to great success. With many one-way streets and few direct cut-throughs, getting from here to there is a bit of a science. Add in round-abouts and narrowness, and you have an adventure!

One other small point that 2 and I put through the LtPC over-analytical wringer was my thought from the Isle of Capri day that I wasn't sure if I had ever been on a true geographical island before Capri. It's still a fuzzy topic, although I think I was probably on a small island in Canada those 20 years ago when I was on that Guy Trip for fishing North of the border. I've never been to Hawaii. Nor any of the Caribbean resort islands. (Cabo is not an island.) But I may have landed in Tokyo when going to/from Korea in the USAF. Whatever. Unlike Kenny Chesney, I am NOT an island guy.


So rather than bore the Peanut Gallery with more minutiae, from a rather ordinary day, I'll sign off for now. The schedule tomorrow is our further drive South...ferry across the strait at Messina...and head to our two-day stay on the Southeast tip of Sicily in Syracuse.

Thanks for reading. Ciao!!!

BCOT