Day 10, December 8, 2007

Day 10, December 8th, 2007
Masseria Mita and the surrounding trulli’s

Today was one of the best days so far this trip. It started out a bit cloudy and rainy and remained that way for most of the day, but the weather in no way affected our nice day. One of the women who works here, Maria, owns a true Masseria (fortified farm) with ancient (seculara) olive trees, a vineyard, and a private orange, mandarin, Clementine and lemon grove. Maria met us at the hotel at 10:30 this morning and we followed her for about ½ an hour south east towards Crispiano where we eventually arrived at a beautiful gate where we turned in and immediately saw a vineyard on the right and an olive tree grove on the left and straight ahead. We followed her down the pathway where her husband (who works on the farm everyday) was waiting. The name of their company is Masseria Mita and in fact they work here year round, but they don’t live on the farm (they live about 20 minutes away in Martina Franca). We had assumed we were just going to taste some wine and olive oil and be off in an hour; however, we were very incorrect and only after 4 hours were we on our way. So when we got there, they gave us a tour (their 10 year old son was there too) of the olive groves with the ancient trees and they showed us the oldest tree on the farm probably dating back to the 1600’s when the farm was created. The trees were beautiful and had enormous trunks that were just amazing. After we walked around the groves, we went into one of the old farm houses where they used to make the wine and we were explained the process of how they pressed the grapes and how the wine traveled into barrels underneath the farm to stay until they were ready to drink. We then went into their private garden which had orange, mandarine, Clementine, rose bushes and lemon trees. We smelled the fruit and it smelled delicious, so they picked some fruit for us and put them in a bag- we have about 5 pounds of citrus that we have to eat in the next week before we come home! They taste wonderful. Finally, we went into their farm house, which they now use for entertaining in the summertime and have invited us back to stay there and to have meals with them under the olive trees in the summertime. There was a platter of bread with tomatoes, olive oil and salt (which we have found out is different here than anywhere else) and some vino rosso (red wine). So we ate and talked for a while and it was so good, so we ended up buying a fair amount of the olive oil and the wine to take home. They also showed us their old wood oven (like a brick oven) that they still use to cook with outside of their house. So after 4 hours of spending time with them, we left and followed them back to Martina Franca where they showed us the best specialty store to buy provincial items, but it was closed. Oh well, we don’t need to spend any more money. So we drove around a little bit more and I took some more Trulli photos and then we came home. I should also mention that today is a large religious holiday here celebrating St. Maria. I don’t know anything else about it, except that everything is closed and our hotel is packed full of Italians eating lunch and dinner here! We have decided not to partake in the expensive price fixe meal and eat cheese and bread in the room for dinner- yummy! Wish we could bring back some cheese- it’s very good.
Someone has pointed out that he didn’t know what a trullo was when I wrote about them before, so I will clarify what they are now. Trulli’s (plural; trullo, singular) are round, stone houses that were built between the 15th and 18th centuries by everyone in this region. They were built in a certain way so that there was one loose stone on top that they could pull out and their entire house would fall down. They would do this in situations when tax men came to collect money or for other purposes to evade paying and getting into trouble. So after these men had left the premises, they would rebuild their home. Very interesting structures and we will miss them when we leave this region tomorrow morning.
Mom has fallen in love as well. With our car. She hugs every corner, drives quickly, and is becoming an Italian. She will be very sad when she has to part with it next Friday.

Day 9, December 7, 2007

Day 9, Exploring the South and the Ionic Sea

The most exciting adventure for today was finding these 4 pigs, who were very big, a bit smelly and kind of cute. Mom was very attracted to them. The plan for today was to go wine tasting, yet we are now going tomorrow with someone to guide us. So we decided to explore around Taranto and the Ionic Coast. We were hoping to find some small fishing villages, but never found them and instead found some industrial areas and an interesting coast line. We did venture into the Costco-esque store of Italy and found our way around to buy water, pasta, cream some Italian paper and some other goodies. Also it was extremely important to find a bathroom as both mom and I need to go pee so badly. So after 4 hours of driving around, seeing the coast and getting a bit lost, we decided to head back towards Martina Franca where we were hoping to find a restaurant that would be open around 4 or 5 (the restaurants here only open between 8 and 9pm for dinner). Well after driving around for ½ an hour trying to find the centro storico (historical center) we gave up and headed home. So our nice driving day ended up with both mom and I exhausted taking a nap when we got home. We’re not sure we’re eating dinner tonight because it’s a prefix menu and it’s expensive, so we’ll nibble on the breadsticks we bought today at the grocery store! Tomorrow is our last day in the Puglia region with the trulli’s and then we head over to the west coast to the Campagnia region and Amalfi.

Day 8, Matera

Day 8, Thursday December 6, 2007:

Today we were supposed to go to the Taranto area and go wine tasting, but plans changed this morning when we found out that the Masseria for the wine tasting was closed today, so we decided to head to Matera instead and do the wine tasting on Friday. I forget to mention in the previous days that we are staying in a Masseria which means a fortified farmhouse just outside of Martina Franca. This fortified farmhouse is surrounded by a large stone wall, a gated entrance and exit, and they are in the process of building a huge spa in the back of ‘hotel.’ In our room, we have these beautiful high ceiling (like in the trulli’s) and wooded windows with lace curtains. Outside the windows there are covers to keep the warm air in because it is freezing here (average of 2-8 degrees Celsius) and we couldn’t figure out how to open them so we tried lifting them to see out the window but we couldn’t get very far up. So yesterday for the first time, mom hit a switch by mistake and it automatically opened the shades so we now know how to open them! So today we ventured to Matera, a unique town in the Basilicata region filled with Sassi’s (stone dwellings carved into ravines dating back to the 8th century B.C.). It took us about 2 hours to drive there (mom practicing her go cart racing) and we drove around the city first to find the two parts of town with the Sassi’s: the Sasso Barisano and the Sasso Caveoso (the older and prettier one). This area was really interesting especially since the area has been inhabited since the 8th century B.C. until the 1950’s. Yes, you are reading that correctly- people lived in the cave, stone houses until the 1950’s when they became so overrun with Malaria that the government forcibly removed over 15,000 people from the cave to houses outside the town. Only in 1993 was the site named a Unesco World Heritage Site. We went inside one too (it was 1.50 Euros) and saw what it was like to live in these caves- it was quite cool. After we walked around for a few hours, we started to leave and found an area across the ravine from the Sassi’s to take some nice evening photos called the Chiese Rupestri, where I think we took more photos of these cool looking cows than we did of the sassi’s! It took us much less time to get home than it did to get there as we went a different way, but overall it was a nice, historical day and very interesting.

Day 7: Puglia

Day 7, December 5, 2007: Exploring the Trulli Area

Today was an exciting and fun day exploring the Puglia region (the region in which we are staying on the ‘heel’ of Italy). Breakfast started this morning in the hotel restaurant in the same trulli where we had dinner last night, with some nice croissants, incredible chocolate spread (like nutella but sooo much better) and our daily dose of caffeine. Our first adventure of the day was trying to find the market in Martina Franca, which we eventually found (and even found a free parking space). The market was huge and apparently Martina Franca is known for its homemade designer clothing and its white wine. We were not aware of the clothing fact before we got there and actually both mom and I bought a skirt that was very cute at the market. We had to of course speak in Italian, or at least try, so we’ve learned a few necessary numbers in Italian and we are getting much better at ‘grazie’ and ‘buongiornio.’ After the market, we decided to make our way to Alberobello which is know for its over a thousand trulli’s. There is a special area even for pedestrian’s only in a Unesco site where many of the trulli’s are. There are stores, houses, restaurants and etc located in the trulli’s and we explored all of the streets with them. We found one store that had hand made linens that looked beautiful, but we weren’t going to enter because there was a sign all in Japanese and we figured it was a Japanese weaver, so there was no need to buy the linens in Italy. However, we were welcomed inside one of the trulli’s to see the loom and the linens were beautiful so we asked to see some more. The woman said the weaver was world famous and a terrific weaver and she was Italian. The sign was only in Japanese because during the summertime the majority of the tourists in this area are Japanese. So we ended up spending almost an hour in this store trying to decide which pattern and style we liked and bought too much, but they will become family heirlooms. We also learned that the whistle in this area is a sign of fertility. After we left Alberobello we made our way a few kilometers to the town of Locorotondo, famous for its white wine, trulli’s and ‘round’ hillside roads. We ended up just driving through, but will probably go through again to take some more photos. We headed to the towns of Crispiano and Ostuni, which showed the Greek influence on the area with white washed walls and more trulli’s. On the way to Ostuni, we found an Olive Oil Factory, which we decided to stop in, as we’ve been looking for actual factories to buy olive oil and wine in. We didn’t know what to do, so we walked into a door and saw men working- so we took some photos, a video and mom decided to ask whether we could buy a small olive oil compared to the huge jugs of olive oil that we saw there (all of this in Italian, by the way). So the man said to go to the main office and ask, but we didn’t know where that was, so he actually took us there and told the women that we wanted to buy smaller jugs of olive oil. She was lovely and took us over to their store for the factory and we tasted a few different varieties of oil which were delicious and we bought a few kinds to bring home! She also went through the entire process of making olive oil, from the olives (with the pits, or as they call it, nuts) to the final production. I have the whole thing videoed and in fact the process takes only 4 hours!! At this point in the day, mom and I were getting a bit tired from our exploring and decided because the sun was setting to make our way back home. We made it home to our hotel for the first time without the GPS, so we were very excited! Tomorrow we have plans to go to the Ionio Coast near Taranto and we are going to visit a few wineries and a few small fishing villages. A doppo. A domain. (until tomorrow, 2 ways of saying it)

Day 6: Adventures to Martina Franca

Day 6: Gargano Peninsula to Martina Franca

We left the Peninsula this morning with overcast skies and drove down the Adriatic coast for a while until we reached Barletta when we decided to get on the Autoroute till we reached the town of Trani. Trani is called the “Pearl of Puglia” and as we drove off the exit both mom and I wondered why- it was industrial, ugly and busy. Mom was honked at in this town for the first time this whole trip! As we drove closer to the water, the streets became narrower and it became much nicer. We found a parking spot (a feat within itself) and walked out towards a beautiful cathedral right on the water with a castle next door. It was beautiful- we were the only tourists- but freezing… the wind was so strong we hid behind the stones as we walked around it to protect us from the howling wind. When we finally found our way back to the Autoroute, we were on our way again heading south bound. We decided to try and fill up with fuel at a self service place and as we began to try to read the instructions, the full service guy came over to try and help us figure it out. So we did it and then we had to go inside and tell them how much we pumped for them to charge us. Well, neither mom nor I knew how to say 35, so we tried. In the end, the woman was very nice and taught us how to say it (if we remember it or not is a different question)! As we left the gas station, a nice windy thunderstorm decided to open up and for the next hour or so until we got to our hotel it was raining/hailing. Our hotel is called Masseria Chiancone Torricella, which had no sign outside and mom didn’t even think we were in the right place until we eventually found an entrance. Once inside, however, it is beautiful and comfortable. There are trulli’s everwhere around here and the restaurant we are eating in this evening is in a Trulli! For the next few days, all we are going to see are Trulli’s so you will see lots of photos.
I would like to mention an incredibly funny story from last night so we don’t forget it. So as you know, we didn’t stay in the scheduled hotel, but stayed in another wonderful hotel, where the food was excellent (I had linguine with mussles, mom had a white fish of sorts that we don’t know what it was, but it was good) and there was no English spoken at all! In the evenings, dad and jeff have been calling us at the hotels and then usually the concierge connects them to our room. Well last night, they both tried to call and couldn’t be connected for some reason and they both tried their best in Italian. The man asked dad about a camera and dad said yes thinking that they knew I was a photographer. Actually “camera” means room in Italian and so dad got no where when he called the hotel. Jeff at least was able to say uno, uno, uno (111) instead of one hundred and eleven (which we didn’t know how to say at the time) and the hotel owner came knocking at our door around 12:30 at night. So a fast asleep mom went to the door and he said something to her that we didn’t understand, but then our cell phone rang and it was Jeff. He said he could hear mom talking to the man and she realized that he was holding the phone talking about jeff asking for our room. Quite funny, because he couldn’t transfer phone calls and it seemed that he was using a cell phone or something similar to receive phone calls to the hotel. So, back to the cell phones we went. We have an hour of free internet for the next five days, so I will try and post a couple of days at a time probably to save time, just fyi for those readers looking in everyday.

Day 5: Gargano Peninsula

I think mom has gotten the hang of the continuous go-kart driving that we endured today. We left San Vito del Mare this morning after having a nice breakfast and drove along the coast for the next 7 hours. We drove through Vasto, Termoli, and several other small towns including Campomarino, which was a cute Albanian town where supposedly they speak in such a dialect that the Italians consider it foreign and cannot understand, so mom and I felt right at home! After leaving there, we decided to drive around the entire Gargano Peninsula, which is part of the Nationale Parco of Gargano, which was beautiful. It took forever as the roads were super narrow, windy, and right on the edge of a large cliff. I even had to put on my motion sickness bands as I wasn’t driving, but trying to look for nice places to stop and take photos. Throughout the whole peninsula, we could hear the ringing of cow bells along side the ocean and it was great. We arrived at the hotel we were supposed to stay at (la veranda hotel), right on the ocean, but it seemed that we were the only ones there and a bit creepy, so we decided to try and get some dinner in the nearby town of Mattinata and found a hotel and restaurant there that seemed much more our style- so it was a bit more expensive, but mom and I both felt much more comfortable and we will go downstairs in a bit to have dinner.

Day 4

Day 4: Rome to San Vito Marina

Today, mom and I drove from Rome to our hotel on the east coast of Italy in the town of San Vito Marina (San Vito Chietino). It was an adventure just leaving Rome. We took a Taxi to the Hertz rental car agency from our hotel (15 E, 5 mins away); it was about 1.3 miles away and we were going to walk, but we were told it was hard to find our way back in Rome driving, so we decided just to bring all of our stuff with us. We got there and the car was all ready for us (with mom’s name on the screen)- the guy was very nice and gave us directions out of Rome, though we still got a little lost and the GPS helped us get back on track and on the A24 heading East. Mom says that driving a stick is like riding a bike: you don’t forget! And she did very well driving in Rome and on the highways. In fact, we both think that Italians are more cautious than the French and so far it’s been easier to drive here than in France (knock on wood, because it was Sunday today). We drove on the Autoroute for about 100 km until we then switched to the A25 towards Pescara and we got off the Autoroute to go to the town of Scanno. There are a few videos of the drive through the steep cliffs and mountains! We saw snow too for the first time today in the mountains which were beautiful. We went through one town, Albruzzo Al’bergo or something like that, that was a charming little town with tiny streets. It was great leaving Rome- I think mom and I were both ready to get out of the touristy area. So we have now arrived in San Vito Marina and are staying in a nice hotel called Hotel Garden right across the street from the water. We tried to find a restaurant for dinner this evening, but had no luck as it was Sunday. We did meet this lovely man who spoke a little broken English and he helped us find a Pizzeria so at least we have some Pizza for dinner. We also learned that the fish (pesche) is brought in daily only Monday through Friday so we should not eat fish on the weekends and that most Italians (at least on this side of the country) eat meat on Sunday’s only. Tomorrow we will drive down the coast to our next one night stop in Mattinata.

Roma, Day 3

I forgot to mention yesterday in my tiredness that there is a photo of mom pretending to ride a Ferrari bike from the Ferrari store that we went into right near the Spanish Steps! Today was still a fair amount of walking for us and a long day, but not as long as yesterday. We only walked for 6 hours today; yesterday was about 8! We ventured to the Roman Forum today and the area of the Coliseum. We came upon a march of what we think were the Polizia marching for some reason and using air horns, whistles and mega phones. I took a video of it, so when I get a chance I’ll post it up here. The massive size of the buildings, or maybe I should say the remaining buildings of the Roman Forum were just unbelievable. It’s difficult to imagine that people lived, worked and did everything in this place where we were today so many years ago. We went to a cemetery there that was used during 20-10 B.C. The Temple of Romulus and some of the other Temples were beautiful. The Coliseum was so touristy that we decided it was better not to enter and just take photographs from the outside. After a few hours of touring this area, we decided to go to the Jewish Ghetto and see the Synagogue, which we were informed was one of the oldest Synagogues in the world. This Jewish section also has the largest number of Jews outside of Israel. On our way in the morning too we came upon a man walking his cat that looked so funny I had to take a photo. We decided to eat at a little place close to the hotel on Via Sistina where we had our first pizza (4 cheese, yummy!)- even mom had some of it! Tonight is our last night in Rome and tomorrow we are bravely going to pick up the rental car and venture East. I do not know if we will have internet for the next few days, so this might be the last post for a bit. Ciao!

Day 2: Roma

We had a truly exhausting day today walking around. We left the hotel around 10:30 this morning and returned home around 8:30 this evening. We walked everywhere... First we ventured to the Vatican which is located about a mile or so from our hotel across the river (Tibere) and we spent most of the day there until around 3ish. We ended up taking a tour from this terrific south african who took us to the Sistine Chapel, Basilica de San Pietro and etc around the Vatican. We sent a few postcards as the Vatican has its own postal service, which is very neat. Afterwards, we headed sort of towards home, but got a bit lost and went to the Pantheon, Piazza Navons, Palazzo Madama, Palazzo Venezia, Montumento a Vittoria Emanuele II, Piazza Barberini and the Spanish Steps. So quite a filling day of tourist things... it will be nice when we don't do as many touristy things and can just walk around and explore- that will probably happen when we leave Rome! We are hear for one more full day and then we leave Rome for the eastern coast- well hopefully, if we can somehow find a way to drive out of Rome!! (We've heard it's quite difficult, so wish us luck!) Here are a few images of our tour guide and a little from today, completely unedited as will be the case with all the images.

Roma: Day 1

Well, we have safely arrived in Rome… after a nice and almost too short flight because neither mom nor I could sleep very much. We did watch Ocean’s Thirteen and I listened to the In flight Italian twice, but not sure I have retained anything yet. So we were picked up by this guy holding mom’s name and whisked away into the city- mom and I were holding hands because we thought we might die in this one car ride. Apparently we have arrived in Rome in the middle of a Taxi strike, so there is a tremendous amount of traffic and apparently tomorrow (Friday) there is an all public transportation strike, which means we will be walking everywhere- which we were planning on doing anyways, except that the Vatican is somewhat far from where we are staying near the Spanish Steps. We made it to our hotel and decided to take a quick nap before we went out to explore, except we were so exhausted that we ended up sleeping for 4 hours! We still made it out though for a few hours in the afternoon to explore, see a few sights (like the Fontana de Trevi) and a few Piazza’s that we stumbled upon; mom lost her sense of direction, we recharged the cell phone and found a nice place to eat that was a bit pricey. Mom ordered a Coke Light (diet coke) for 5 Euro’s and I had tea for 6 Euro’s- holy crap… no more drinks for us! That was more expensive than a bottle of wine, so from now on, we will just be drinking alcohol! Our hotel is very cozy on a one way street that is quiet and nice. Here are some images from our travels so far:

Today's the Day...

My mom and I are about to leave the house to fly from jfk to rome this afternoon. Nothing like an 8 hour flight to kick off the trip. Because we are using miles to fly there, we have the luxury of flying business class- so we are both super excited about that... in fact probably equally as excited to fly business as we are to go to Italy! We are supposed to arrive at 7:30 in the morning Rome time and then will freshen up and explore Rome. Mom, of course, as everyone should know by now, has brought too much stuff and has a suitcase, a duffel, a rolly poley (sp?), a backpack and her purse, which is huge itself. I am traveling much lighter- with one suitcase and a rolly poley with all my camera gear in it. Go figure?!?! We have a "Learn Italian on the Plane" podcast that both mom and I will have to master by the time we get there. Wish us luck. And so the trip begins.

Italia here we come!!

For those of you who are interested, my mom and I are going on a trip to Italy starting on November 28th. When we have internet access, I will be updating this blog to the events and happenings of our trip. For a brief overview of our itinerary, here goes:

Arrive in Rome and stay for 3 nights.

Drive East to the adriatic coast line and drive down the coast for 3 nights.

Stay a bit inland on the heel of the boot for 5 nights.

Drive back West towards Amalfi and stay on the Amalfi coast for 4 nights.

Our last night will be in Naples.

I will try and update as much as possible, so feel free to follow along!

Defoor Centre Opening!

Kyle and I couldn't make it to this opening, so others went in our place and Steve made a great Rebecca and Lee made a great Kyle! Enjoy.

Art House Opening!

Final Project Shots

Here is a selection of images from my studio shoot for my final project. Most of the images taken were shot with the Canon 5D with an iso of 100, f-stop of 11 (bracketed from 9 to 13), and a shutter speed of 100-125th of a second. I used 2 strobe pro-photo lights: a small softbox and a grid light with 5 degrees. The last shot is of the studio setup.