Paestum and troubles…

It has been a challenging couple of days for us but we are still smiling. It started with my first Italian haircut. My man Antonio and I had a little communication problem and he cut it a little short. I guess it it should grow back but at this point in my life I can’t be sure.

We had spent 8 days on the Amalfi coast and we are now headed to Calabria (the toe of the Italian boot) and on the way we wanted to see the Greek ruins at Paestum so we booked a room for 1 night at a beach hotel.

We got off the train in Paestum and the train station was deserted. No taxis or public transit anywhere. So we started walking the 3 miles to our hotel. We got to the ruins in about a mile but we couldn’t go in because we still had our luggage. Still not many people around…. We decided to walk all the way to the hotel but didn’t get very far before Meg lost one of her 4 wheels on her Roly bag.

Luckily it happened next to one of the only restaurants that was open and a waiter took pity on us and called us a cab. $15 to get the remaining 2 miles to our hotel. Only 1 car in the parking lot for this 25 room hotel.

Now we were safe in our hotel room but it was only 2pm and we still wanted to go see the ruins. We didn’t want to spend another $30 round trip on taxis so our hotel allowed us to borrow a couple of bikes. After traveling about 1/4 mile we realized we had made a mistake. These were heavy one speed bikes that probably never had the chains oiled. The worst part was Meg’s seat that we didn’t have a wrench to adjust so she was riding so low that it was killing her knees.

We ended up walking the bikes a lot but we did get to the ruins again. It was fantastic to walk through these temples from 500 BC without hardly anyone around. We then suffered through the bike/walk back to the hotel and even found a convenience store on the way to get a bottle of wine .

We then got ready for dinner and asked the desk clerk if there were restaurants open. She said there was. Within walking distance?

Um….no…

But we were hungry so we decided to start walking to a cluster of we saw on Google maps a mile away. One of them even had a review from last week.

We walked by lots of hotels, RV parks and campgrounds that were all shut down for the season. The main street with all the restaurants also had all the tourist shops and restaurants closed. It was dark and just eery to be walking in what was probably a very busy beach town just a couple of months ago.

It was 75 degrees and sunny during the day and I don’t understand why people don’t come to the beach when the water is still swimmable. People go to Ocean Shores in January back in Washington.

But we eventually found a pizza place that in an RV park that opened at 7. We got there at 7:15 and it was packed and they told us they were out of pizza. The did have some seafood pasta so we went for that. The menu was in Italian and German and when we started looking around we realized we were the only non Germans in the restaurant. Remember we are in Italy….

My clam spaghetti and Meg’s mussel gnocchi was awesome and it will be one of those unforgettable travel meals. This actually why we like traveling.

Next stop- Tropea, Calabria, Italy