Welcome to Calabria

January 31 to February 2

Somehow the demonstrators cleared the tracks, and our train rolled into Reggio about two hours late. Where’s Mussolini when you need him? He got the trains to run on time, they say.

Actually, although the trains in Italy are nowhere near as good as those in France, Spain, or England, they do perform far better than rail service in the States.

I was on an Amtrak train once that got lost. No kidding.

I was coming back from Washington to Newark and we stopped on a track in Morrisville, Pa., just short of the “Trenton Makes” bridge over the Delaware River.

We sat for a while. Then we were told there was construction on the tracks. We sat longer. Maybe they decided to wait till the tracks had been rebuilt.

They must have grown tired of waiting. We finally backtracked a couple of miles to the last junction and got onto a track that was working.

How do you do that with a train? The tracks were torn up. They didn’t know? Nobody bothered to mention it? 

Our first stop in Reggio was dinner at a place recommended by the man at the hotel desk and frequented by locals called Veranda de Villeggiante on Via Amendola. I took a couple of wrong turns, but finally found it. 

I got a decent bottle of red to go with a pork chop and a dish of pasta whose name I don’t know. It looks like huge rigatoni. The reason we ordered it is that it was the chef’s special of the day, made with chickpeas and mussels. Very good combination.

Then it was time to crash.

Wednesday we went for a walk on the promenade that runs by the shore. The locals claim it is the most beautiful kilometer in Italy and in the world.

It is charming, especially after a week in the Naples metro area, which has as much trash, corruption, and decay as a Third-World dump.

The promenade extends along the shore of the Straits of Messina. It was a sunny day and we could see the colors of the water. Near the beach, there was a band of green and then a little farther out the water became dark blue.

There is a long park between Corso Vittorio Emmanuele III and (I believe) Viale Italo Falcomata. It’s planted with huge trees whose foliage looks like magnolia leaves, but the limbs have air roots. The principal roots look like cypress and tie gorgeous knots on the ground. 

We strolled that way a while, enjoying in particular the much cleaner streets and buildings. One, though, looked in sad shape. It was a Moorish looking palacio, which may have been a private home early in the 20th century. 

We couldn’t tell if it was abandoned, undergoing restoration, or merely occupied by squatters. There was glass, however, in most of the windows.

There is a large amphitheater at the waterside with a monument to Vittorio Emmanuele III. He apparently was the top commander of the Italian armed forces in World War I. 

Joanna caught the tile work, the monument, and the straits in the photo of the day.

The archaeological museum was on our visiting list. On the way, we saw a place called Le Palme, which billed itself as a seafood kitchen.

Joanna had a yen for caprese salad so we went in. They had the salad, of course, but also offered several seafood dishes that are house specialties.

I had one, a take on carbonara which starts out conventionally enough with eggs and cheese, but makes a quick turn seaward with tuna instead of pig cheek. It was excellent.

So was the salad.

We enjoyed it so much, in fact, that we plan to go back.

The museum is part of the national system of museums, which include others in various cities. The museum in Naples housing much of the art recovered from Pompeii and Herculaneum is probably part of the same system.

The museum showcases artefacts from paleolithic times through the Greek settlement known as Magna Graecia to the Roman era.

You are supposed to start at the top and work your way down. But we didn’t know that at first and so went backward in time.

Most of the pieces are small: coins, medallions, fragments of sculpture, and pottery. 

We walked through those galleries and then came to a sign pointing the way to the Riace Bronzes. The what? 

They are the crown jewels of the museum. 

You enter a sliding door and another door closes in front of you. The museum guide tells you to dust off your suit. And then you sit for a few minutes while the air filter works on you.

Only then are you sufficiently purified to enter the room with the bronzes. 

The bronzes are two larger-than-life statues of warriors. One looks like Zeus, standing on a plain white platform and looking scary big with curly beard and hair, and enough muscles to throw lightning a good distance. 

There was no printed information, but there were several people in the room. Several of them were offering information, but only one, an art student, spoke a little English. 

I asked her about the curly-haired guy. Does this represent a specific subject? Too much too fast. Rephrase: No name? 

No, he has no name. He’s called A. His partner, B, is on the next platform. 

B, we were told, is a little less god-like. At least, his beard is more realistic, rendered as wavy lines rather than tight gnocchi-size curls.

For all that finicky preparation we went through, the bronzes are a lot tougher than you’d expect. They were pulled from the sea near a town called Riace. Hence the name.

The student told us they had been thrown overboard from a boat that was too heavy in the water. The figures apparently had shields and javelins, which may have been removed before the statues were tossed into the water.

There is also a bronze head that was stolen and later recovered in Basle, Switzerland. One guidebook carried a photo of the Basle head and said it might represent St. Paul. 

If the dating we were given is correct, any connection with St. Paul would have to do with reincarnation or remote ancestry. It was apparently made in the 4th century B.C.

We had already had dinner for the day. So after the museum, we went back to the hotel. I had stashed a bottle of Valpolicella in the room and had that with some emergency pizza (surprisingly not too bad) from downstairs.

Thursday, the 2nd, we got a late start and I was wearing a red shirt. So we strolled down the Corso Giuseppe Garibaldi to the Piazza Duomo, the Cathedral Square. The current Romanesque building replaces an earlier Byzantine-influenced church. 

The new church dates to the early 20th century because the older one, along with much of the town of Reggio, was knocked down by an earthquake in 1908.

A few parts have been salvaged, including a highly decorated chapel devoted to the eucharist. The walls are covered with elaborate motifs and there are statues of the evangelists and Peter and Paul in niches. 

Other treasures of the church are sarcophagi for archbishops, including two from the 16th century. In a dark corner of one side chapel there is a very old wooden crucifix that stands several feet tall.

As we often do, we found a bar named for the church, so I had to stop in for a quick drink at the Duomo Bar. Like most bars here, it serves sweets, coffee, and drinks.

We went back to the museum to see the upper floors. There was nothing quite so spectacular as the bronzes, but it was well worth a couple of hours of touring.

There was a considerable collection of ancient pottery, and exhibits discussing the styles of different periods. It seems that undecorated pottery came later than the red and black styles. At least, that’s what I remember.

There were a few reconstructed large-scale stone pieces, including two sons of Zeus riding horses held up by tritons.

There were also reconstructions of ancient burials showing the arrangement of grave goods. I always love that kind of stuff. 

Many of those were on the top floor in the stone and early metal age exhibits.

We went back to Le Palme for dinner: a swordfish steak and a more conventional carbonara with cured pork. I bought a bottle of local Calabrian red named after St. Stephen. 

This could be St. Stephen of Nicea, the first bishop of Calabria, who was consecrated by St. Paul in Reggio. Or maybe not. I can’t be sure.

It was OK but not as good as the Catanian Aglianicos or several other reds. 

We caught a ferry out of Reggio for Messina on Friday morning and then took a train to Taormina. I’m finishing this on the balcony of the hotel room.

Get this: there’s a mountain with clouds drifting over it to the southwest.

No. They aren't clouds. That’s steam. Friends, I’m sitting a few miles from Mount Etna. I’ll send more later, if the mountain doesn’t blow up.

Love to all.

Harry

Feb. 3

"The" wine of Calabria is a little-known curiosity called Ciro. The grape is called gaglioppo (sometimes blended with a small amount of white grapes).

Yes, I had to look up the grape variety. I used to know all of this stuff off the top of my head, but I'm getting old. I did, however, remember Ciro and how surprisingly good it can be for the money.

Also, the area is known for using chilis in the food occasionally.

Enjoy! 

Larry