Friends old and new

So Montréal

No interstate highways from northwestern Connecticut to the heart of Berkshire County in western Massachusetts. Beautiful drive. One stop on the way, at Berkshire Mountain Bakery in Housatonic (excellent pain au chocolat, and a loaf and some kouign amann to bring). After the family love, we experienced yet more warm and generous hospitality from my high school bestie and her husband.

The last time I had seen them was for a class reunion in 2002, when they once again very generously put me up and fed me. This was a more relaxed time. We had lunch upon arrival. We had a great long walk into the nearby countryside, followed by a superb dinner (restaurant quality, I said, and it was true). We had lots and lots of very enjoyable conversation.

Two homestays in a row with bird feeders! This time we saw an elusive cardinal, a female. We also saw a bluebird using a bluebird box. I don't think I'd ever seen a bluebird before! I spotted a possum facing off with a neighbourhood cat and soon slinking away to safety.

My friend showed us the Merlin app that identifies birds by their sounds. Now Sweetie and I are both using it. The nearby countryside where we walked is quite open, and we heard many species.

They sent us off in the morning full of eggs, bacon, and toast, plus coffee for the driver. It's been hard to have such great company and then have to leave so soon. I love where we live, but I wish it weren't so far away from people that I love.

From the Berkshires, we could have zipped over to I-87 in New York fairly quickly, but I selected a Google Maps alternative that would take us on a diagonal through Vermont into Upstate New York. A wandering diagonal it was, on US and state routes and sometimes even on county roads and roads with no number. More than once we doubted the wisdom of Google Maps' choices. Adirondack Park featured a good half dozen long single-lane alternating sections while road work was going on, which Maps seemed not to know about.

When we reached Westport, not far from where we finally met up with the highway, I noticed a coffee shop, a rainbow flag at a nearby art store, and other rainbow things. We needed a pit stop anyway. The coffee shop is called Jambs. It featured a multicoloured electric "Open" sign, great coffee, and a very nice young man running the place. After so many signs along the way supporting the would-be dictator, this town was a refreshing find. We'd already seen some multilingual Hate Has No Home Here signs, and there was one in a shop window.

It wasn't long until we made it to the border. I had forgotten to grab my Canadian passport from the trunk; the guard let me through on my US passport and my French name. I'm not kidding. We made it to Le Nouvel Hotel through evening traffic. I skilfully wedged Taylor into a narrow space in the tiny underground lot.

Montréal is another old friend. When we lived in Boston, we would manage the occasional four-day weekend there, staying at an inexpensive hotel on the east end near the bus station and the Dunkin Donuts. I also toured with a surf band and played at the legendary Les Foufounes Éléctriques (we were not quite a match for the vibe). We've had a lot of experiences in this city. It's on my personal list of the great cities I've visited.

Montréal welcomed us back. That evening, at a South Indian restaurant with the extremely unpretentious name Our Place, our second choice after our first choice Indian restaurant was closed, we had the best dosas we'd ever had. We have a favourite dosa house here at home, but the ones at Our Place South Indian were better. Now we're spoiled.


In the morning, Sweetie and I walked to breakfast at L'Oeufrier (De La Montagne) (excellent oatmeal, a rarity in restaurants) and then to the Redpath Museum at McGill University, which features a large mineral collection and a paleontology wing, as well as a third-floor human culture collection that we were too tired to climb to (the building is about to undergo an accessibility retrofit). At the end of a long grassy area in front of the Redpath was the Palestinian support encampment. Old antiwar protester solidarity from afar.

Stade olympique on the east side

On the Sicily tour last spring, we had hit it off especially well with this one couple. They live less than an hour outside the city and were in town that day for appointments, and we had arranged to meet up. They picked us up a bit after 2. They brought us up "the mountain" (Mont Royal) to a couple of the viewpoints. Then they drove us into Vieux Montréal. I love the old city, but right now several blocks of it are torn up, the Basilique de Montréal is under more scafolding than Notre-Dame-de-Paris, and they still charge you money to go inside.

We had intended to go for coffee, but by the time we had parked and found the destination, it was cocktail hour. And then rooftop drinks turned into munchie food that turned into supper. N'duja fries! And a good charcuterie plate. Then a trip to an ice cream shop. We were glad this meetup worked out!

We did a lot of peopling on this trip, and it was all unexpectedly awesome for this awkward introvert. With family and friends who make me this comfortable, I'm less awkward and better able to interact. Love and acceptance make all the difference in human interactions.

We were switching to an airport hotel for the final night due to an early flight, so we had to deal with Taylor all day. In late morning, we managed to find a one-hour parking space near Snowdon Deli. Service was snappy, and very quickly we had a couple of huge smoked meat sandwiches in front of us, with half sours and coleslaw. The smoked meat (medium, not lean) was hands down the best we'd ever had, including from Schwartz's, the late Ben's, and our home-town favourite Anny's. Melt-in-your-mouth. The sides were delicious. And the service was so efficient that we were back at the car well before the hour was up.

Métaséquoia / dawn redwood at Arboretum

We drove to the Arborteum, again parked for free (until 4 pm), and spent the next few hours walking among trees and gardens and listening to birds. Then before it was time for vehicles to be towed in preparation for rush hour traffic, we hopped in Taylor and became rush hour traffic, inching our way on the autoroute and through one particularly gnarly interesection to the hotel Aloft near the airport.

Aloft doesn't have a real restaurant. I Google Map searched for nearby restaurants, figuring basic was the best we'd find. Au contraire! A short walk from the hotel across the highway, there is Restaurant Bar Foccaccio, an unexpectedly superb Italian trattoria.

We realized after we couldn't change our bookings that we need not have changed hotels. The drive to the airport from Le Nouvel Hotel would have been short and easy at 5:30 am. But if we hadn't changed, we would never have discovered Foccaccio. A goodbye kiss from a beloved friend.

And we arrived home to peak spring bloom in the habitat. What more could I ask for?

Family ties

Not our brownstone

After the Moncton-of-not-much-there and the fort-but-no-museum, we had an easy drive on a lovely day to Saint John, New Brunswick. Our Airbnb, a brownstone in the South End (a preservation area chock full of old buildings) was super cute and charmingly weird. Its long U shape with long connecting hallway meant that the media room and bedroom were quite separate from the kitchen, parlour, and bathroom. Our hosts, who lived in the basement suite (ground floor in the back), couldn't have been nicer.

That evening, we walked to Uptown to join Sweetie's sister and her wife at Grannan's for excellent seafood and great company.

We also spent much of the next day in Uptown. It's really the only neighbourhood in Saint John you want to go to, other than the South End. Uptown has the coffee shops and restaurants, the boutiques and the old churches, the thriving mall and the mall on life-support. The latter was home to the New Brunswick Black Historical Society, where we got a personal tour through history and artifacts from a volunteer elder whose family had lived in the area for several generations. There was a cruise ship in the harbour, but the Saint John Market was not too crowded, and we were able to get lunch.

That evening, we drove several kilometres east to my sisters-in-law's beautiful house on a bluff that overlooks the Bay of Fundy. We had a lovely dinner and lots of quality family and new (to us) dog interaction.

The drive the next day through southwestern New Brunswick into Maine was grey and wet. But there was a notable stumble-upon. If you love Reuben sandwiches and happen to be in Newport, Maine, or really anywhere near Newport, Maine, head to the Newport Diner. We had the best Reuben either of us has ever had. It was the epitome of Reubens. And with onion rings instead of fries, I was in hog heaven.

But Pancho is a sweetie

After the rest of a very long drive, we arrived in Hampton Beach. Our Airbnb was a suite in an old hotel, across from the beach, not far from the centre of the town. We had supper at the house of my older sister and her husband, whom I had not seen in seven years (and longer for Sweetie). The next day we took them out for seafood lunch, joined by their son from New York, our nephew, for extra family fun. It had been many years since I had eaten fried clams (with the bellies), and I enjoyed them thoroughly.

We tell my sister, we gotta arcade. We love to play skeeball and I love to play pinball. My sis says, come over after you're done, I want you to meet someone, and there is chocolate stout cake involved. I am not sus at all.

We arrive at the house to find the best surprise ever: five cousins on my father's side and my last living aunt, his younger sister, still pretty sharp at 97. I had not seen any of these folks since Christmas of 1992, before we went off to the Left Coast. The interaction among us was wonderful, full of stories I hadn't known. I was bowled over that my sister would think to get us all together and to be able to pull it off. And of course she and her husband hosted and fed us all. I am deeply grateful.

Before we left, after the extended family had departed, my brother-in-law demoed his extensive and engaging HO-scale train layout. I'm not sure how I had missed this every other time I had been at the house.

The next day, we got an early start, and by just after 10 we made it to eastern Connecticut and the home of my niece, the aforementioned older sister's daughter, and her husband and their children, the closest we'll ever have to grandchildren.

In two brief hours, my ex-teacher spouse won the hearts of two boys, one a bit reserved, in a variety of ways, from reading a funny story upon arrival to fist-bumping to say goodbye. I love kids, and I'm usually good with them, but Sweetie is next level and probably the level after that. Neither of us ever talks down to kids, which I think they appreciate. We went from funny old strangers to family in that short visit. We had a lovely time chatting with the grownups too, in between fawning over their offspring.

By early afternoon, we were in northwestern Connecticut, where my cousin and her husband live. I had contacted them to visit, and they said "come stay." She and her three siblings are my only first cousins on my mother's side of the family. The two nearby siblings, one with spouse, were able to come join us for an afternoon barbecue.

Pancho and bird feeder (birds not included)

The last time I saw any of these cousins was 10 years ago at my mother's memorial. In my cousins' lovely home and with their generous hospitality, we had a very convivial reunion. And after the party, we spent the evening and morning with our hosts, two of the loveliest people you could ever hope to meet. It was really the first substantial time we'd spent together, really the first time I've ever done that with any of my cousins. We learned that we all have a lot of common interests, and we never ran out of things to talk about.

We city dwellers also drank in the surroundings, the beautiful lot with fruit trees and a forest behind. We were kind of obsessed with watching the bird feeder, seeing different species than we have out west, notably rose-breasted grosbeak and tufted titmouse (cardinals were more elusive).

My family didn't live near the extended family. We were always the visitors, never really involved in our cousins' lives as they were in each others' lives. It was quite a profound experience to have some "late immersion" after so many years apart. And by confirming some stories and debunking others, it was also an educational experience for this family genealogist.

The party at my sister's was the family reunion that happens every Christmas but that I hadn't been to in over 30 years, and though the time was short, the love came thick and fast. The morning with our grands (and their parents) was so precious that I know we can't let the next meetup be another seven years from now, even if only by occasional video call. And getting to know my cousin, whom I've always known but have never known well, with her husband in their lovely house in that beautiful countryside, was profoundly gratifying.

All the family encounters were a pleasure and a priviledge beyond measure. I never knew how much I missed this kind of family interaction. I had not known how beneficial it would be for me.

Ancestral shtetls

Great-grandaunt

After spending the night in Longueuil, just east across the Saint-Lawrence River from Montréal, we lit out for Saint-Ferdinand. The small town on Lac William is where my mother's maternal grandparents migrated from. And indeed migrated to, an internal migration a generation earlier from the Beauce region south of Québec to this area to the southwest, no doubt in search of new land to farm.

The beginning of the drive was via autoroute, not terribly exciting. We got well acquainted with the offerings from Sirius XM. Do you know any other people who would switch between the Beatles, Lithium (grunge and other 90s music), Bob Marley, Little Steven's Underground Garage, and Taylor's Version? Before long, per Sweetie, Taylor was the name of our rented white Chevy Malibu (reserve a small car you really want, get an "upgrade" because you're late).

Saint-Ferdinand turned out to be a very cute town right on the lake, with some historic buildings, surrounded by farms. It gets busy in summer. It turned out to be the only place I would find the headstones I was looking for: my great-great-grandparents, a great-granduncle, and a great-grandaunt.

We spent the next two nights on Île d'Orléans, just downriver from Québec. The Airbnb in Saint-Laurent was the shiz, a gorgeous place that overlooked the south channel of the Saint Lawrence River. Our host was as nice as the place. A short walk away was an épicérie with some foodstuffs and a variety of alcoholic beverages.

Our Lady of the Goat Dairy Gnome

It was during a motoring tour of the island on our first full day, in Sanite-Famille, that the injurious mishap occurred. Not to us. To Taylor. It involved a safe reversal of direction by me, an unsafe reversal of direction weirdly close by in the opposite direction by a young man with his mom in the passenger seat, a complete failure to check the rear-view mirror or hear a blaring horn, and an unfortunate assault on Taylor by the blue car's rear bumper. She suffered minor wounds to the driver's side front bumper and fender. No one was physically injured, and the tire was not impeded, so we could still drive the car. We did not need any of the stressful shit that came out of this, but I got zen about it, exchanged information, made the claim, and did followup when necessary.

To add insult to injury, the poutine from the famous place for which we had reversed direction was only a'ight. Not even, because something was weird about the sauce. And we had to wait in line behind the young man and his mother, who both seemed pretty casual about what he had done.

It wasn't easy for either of us to shake that off, but Île d'Orléans is too lovely, even in the off season, for us not to have had a good time anyway. We had a lovely dinner on the water; we got goat cheese soft serve, goat cheese, and a fresh baguette; we bought cool stuff from a place that made its own vinegar, primarily from black currant; and I had several kinds of beer from the local craft brewer (from the épicérie), all excellent.

From Saint-Laurent looking toward Beauport

We passed through Saint-Lambert and Saint-Isidore south of the city, the fragrant farm country of my father's maternal grandparents. As on the Île, no hits in the cemeteries. This trend would continue.

I didn't even bother to check in Montmagny, which has five cemeteries and a church that has been moved several times. Montmagny, a larger town downriver from the Île, is the land of my father's paternal grandfather, who left for work in the US when he was 14 and never went back. I wouldn't mind visiting again. There are things to do. We satisfied a craving for 'ot chicken (hot chicken sandwich with gravy and peas) at a Saint-Hubert in town.

Kamouraska, where we spent the night, is even further downriver. It's the town my mother's paternal grandparents came from. Kamouraska is tiny and, when it's not summer, mostly closed. Our loft above a jewellery store was funky, and somewhat dangerous to the head near the eaves if you weren't careful, but it had a nice view of the river (I am a river person) and was right among the only things that were open. We were across the street from the church and its graveyard (no hits), which itself was next to a farm. The town museum, the kind of thing we would have loved, was closed when Google claimed otherwise.

We did have an extraordinary meal, and that's no small thing. A short walk from our place was an elevated diner called Grand'Ourse: La Cantine de Kamouraska that served some of the most flavourful food we have ever tasted. We would so go back if we lived there. The local coffee shop was quite nice as well.

Next came one of three long driving days, all the way to Moncton, New Brunswick. I had no idea Moncton was such a not-nice place. Our Airbnb was fine, although weird -- a basement suite in a brand new house in a brand new development that wasn't even finished and often lacked paving. Don't go to Moncton.

The closest I came to my distant Acadian ancestors was at Fort Beauséjour. No graves here, no actual settlement, just this fort. It's a Parks Canada site and closed until the first week in June, so no museum, but we walked around the fort and read the interpretive signs and looked out over the extraordinary panorama of dikes and poulders and ocean. The forebears farmed land in that panorama. It was cold and windy and I loved the spot. The blueberry farm a few kilometres away that made their own ice cream was a very pleasant stumble-upon.

So this part of the trip was less about headstones than I had hoped, but as Sweetie says, I walked in the footsteps of my ancestors, literally. It was great to get a feel for the places where my migrant forebears grew up and that they then left behind.

 

 

(Panoramic view from Fort Beauséjour)

 

Big round number birthday trip

Fournier ancestors had a bigger street

The trip was kind of a wild hair. I turned 70 this year, which Sweetie refers to as a "big round number birthday," so I got to choose the big trip. Instead of going back to Europe (always my first love), something made me choose a fly-drive trip through Québec, New Brunswick and New England.

Sweetie and I would fly into Montréal and then drive across Québec over the next few days to visit what Sweetie calls my ancestral "shtetls," the villages where my great-grandparents and grandfather lived and where often their families had lived for many generations. Those were the places my migrant ancestors left behind for the United States.

We would also visit (and stay on) Île d'Orléans, where the people bearing around 170 of the 434 distinct surnames of my settler ancestors lived and worked in the early days of Nouvelle-France. From there we would drive to Acadia to see what was left of my ancestors who lived there before leaving for Lower Canada not long before the Expulsion.

After that, we would visit Sweetie's sister and sister-in-law in New Brunswick. Then a long drive through Maine to New Hampshire to see my older sister and her husband, whom we had not seen for about seven years. Then a drive to eastern Connecticut to meet our two grandnephews for the first time, and a drive to northwestern Connecticut to visit with my cousin, daughter of my mother's only brother, and her husband, whom we had not seen in 10 years. From there, we would proceed to the Berkshires in Massachusetts to see my BFF from high school and her husband, and finally back to Montréal for a couple of days of plain old tourism (and R&R).

Pancho the travel octopod

I figured none of the driving days was too long. I'm half human-half car, and I've done a lot of long-distance driving in my life. Despite my big round number age, I determined that I could handle it. I didn't realize until the end of the trip that the distance would be more than 3,200 km in all — almost 2,000 miles, or more than halfway across the continent.

When we described our itnerary to one of our hosts in Saint John, New Brunswick, he called it the trip of a lifetime. I had not thought about it that way. I knew it was an epic journey, but I left without too many expectations. I knew that I would enjoy whatever I found. As it turns out, it really was the trip of a lifetime, largely thanks to the wonderful family and friends we spent quality time with.

All shall be told, when I can manage it.

There's no place like home

I'm homeless. Not unhoused, and this house, our first and so far only house, is definitely a home. And the place where the house is located, a small city near Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, is very nice and as close to a home as I've had, certainly the place where I've lived the longest. But it's not Home.

I was born in the United States, and I spent the first 40 years of my life there. My family lived in two small towns in New Hampshire and two in Massachusetts. With all that moving, there is no one place that I grew up. After my father died, my mom retired to a New Hampshire seacoast town that none of the family had ever lived in. So "home town" is an elusive concept for me.

My roots lie in French Canada and mostly in France before that. My ancestors seven and more generations back were almost all migrants, leaving Europe behind for what they called Nouvelle-France, a land they shared, sometimes peacefully, sometimes not, with Indigenous peoples.

In 1763, the settlers lost the dream of a new homeland when the British achieved military conquest, and the French crown abandoned them. The Conquest made them all, French and Indigenous alike, subjects of a foreign monarch. Sometimes I wish the settlers had all returned to France, as some did, even though that would mean I wouldn't be here.

(Despite feeling no love for les maudits anglais who subjugated my ancestors and were pretty awful colonists in general, I have a fondness for the English in England and the magnificent language of Shakespeare.)

Many generations after the Conquest, six of my great-grandparents and one grandfather uprooted themselves from the poverty of rural Quebec and went to the United States to seek better opportunities, even though those opportunities often began and sometimes ended with factory labour and all the hazards that entailed.

The "little Canada" where I was born was different that the rest of New Hampshire. New England history and American history were not my history. My parents had always let us know that we were "of French-Canadian extraction." More than my siblings, I always felt French-Canadian, and different. Even though I was a third-generation American and spoke no more than a smattering of French, I never felt assimilated. I have always sensed the loss of place and culture that happens with migration. From early on, I had a desire to move "back" to Canada.

The WASP-y historical Massachusetts town where we lived from when I was four until I finished Grade 8 was not really home. My mom could always blend, but my dad's family tends to have a ruddy complexion, and he stood out to some extent as a "visible minority." He was the high school principal. One day, one of the students, feeling disgruntled about something, told me to tell my dad that he was a frog. That incident is seared into my memory. I even remember where we were when he said that.

I have my mom's complexion and all the white privilege that goes along with that, but I resent having to check the "White" box on forms, and sometimes I don't. "White" started as English Protestant and then British-American Protestant, plus other "Nordic" Christians -- defintely not Catholics -- and that was broadened only very slowly and reluctantly. My people were not considered "white" when they arrived, any more than the Irish or Italians were.

We moved again before I went to high school. That town is nice, but I lived there for only four years plus two summers, so I never got rooted. Once again, it wasn't home.

I went to university in Boston, a place I love dearly. Boston is where I met Sweetie and where we both played in several original music bands. After that, it was where I worked in theatre for several years. I had thought Boston would be my home, but it never quite was. We couldn't afford to settle there, and after 20 years, we both felt restless. Sweetie wanted to go to graduate school. I wanted to go to a place where film and television acting was more of a thing. We both needed a new scene.

We considered relocating to Montreal. Curiously for a place far from the ocean, McGill University has a marine biology graduate program. But it would not have been the best place for either of us given what we wanted to do, so we ended up moving to the Left Coast, her to Seattle and me to Vancouver. I migrated across the same international boundary my forebears had crossed but in the opposite direction and several thousand kilometres to the west. Sweetie followed once she had finished school.

So there we were, in Canada. "Back" in Canada, for me. And yet...it was not the Canada I knew, which was basically Quebec. The bilingual Pierre Trudeau vision I grew up with never really existed. I remember visiting Ontario when I was a kid and thinking how different it was from Quebec. So British. A bit quaint. And I have learned that British Columbia is nothing like what I knew of Canada. English Canadians aren't all alike, but they have a lot of shared culture, and it's quite different from French Canadian culture. Despite being an anglophone in Canada, I will never be English Canadian.

I think about Quebec, and yet that could no longer be home either. Sweetie and I could both overcome the language barrier to an extent, but modern Quebec is not the same place as the province my forebears left. In the time since my family left, it has changed radically. As well, it's bloody cold in winter. Somehow, I did not inherit my ancestors' ability to thrive in cold weather.

I dream of France. I know I've been there only on vacation, and vacations aren't real life, but the comfort I feel there is surprising and delightful. Could the place most of my people left 400 years ago ever be home? I would love to find out.

Meanwhile, if home is where the heart is, then for now home is here, with my Sweetie. We know a lot of lovely people here. We're even speaking more French in the house! But Home might be a place that I will never find because, for me, it doesn't exist.

Trulli the end

Underground again

At this point, Sweetie and I were starting to feel poorly. Our first stop of the day was the Grotte di Castellana. I still felt well enough to explore the caves. Even if Sweetie had been well, she would not have wanted to do all the climbing and descending and keeping footing on wet rocks. It would have been Erice all over again. So Sweetie stayed with the bus and later went with another remainer to check out some outside things. I masked up and did the cave thing.

I think it was the management that screwed up our time slot, not our people, because we were there pretty early. Our dogged tour guide hashed it out with them whilst we were entertained (perhaps) by an elderly gravel-voiced troubador. We ended up going into the caves with an Italian guide with translation provided by our own tour guide doing extra duty, because otherwise it would have taken too long until the next English-language tour.

We were allowed to photograph only in the first huge chamber, which was quite spectacular enough. We then proceeded through smaller spaces and a huge variety of stalactites and other rock growths from the ceiling, accompanied by expected (stalagmites) and less-expected formations on the floor. There was a lot of up and down, and the way sometimes got damp. Sweetie would not have liked it at all. Fortunately, I am part mountain goat, and I enjoyed it.

Trulli could be yours!

From there, we drove to Alberobello. First, lunch at Miseria e Nobiltà (named for a film, I believe). I did not note what we had! I'm going to guess some kind of sausage pasta. I recall a puff pastry for dessert, which we had outside, and a small purchase of wine.

Then we were off on a walk through occasional spitting rain to the part of Alberobello that's packed with world-famous Trulli houses. I think people recognize them even if they don't know what they're called. On the genuine ones, the roof stones are self-supporting without mortar, like igloos. The weight gets evenly distributed through the stones. Apparently, if you took the roof down when the tax people came, you got taxed less. Then you built the roof again.

I quite enjoyed this neighbourhood of nothing but Trulli houses as far as the eye could see. As it was a tourist area, there were buskers about. One was a harpist sounding quite lovely in the setting. Then he played a tune that I recognized and quickly identified: "Shallow" by Lady Gaga, a song I love. I got a little verklempt because it was beautiful and evocative.

Densification

Sweetie and I then walked to the other side of the valley and just looked around. I did the stand-up coffee thing, not having recaffeinated after lunch. We wanted to visit the Basilica of Saints Cosmas and Damian, but we ran out of time.

By dinner time, we were both feeling pretty punk, and not in a good way. We wanted to socialize (we really did -- this was a great bunch of interesting people), but we did not want anyone getting our germs, so we convinced our beloved guru to have the staff set up a "kids table." They were kind enough to do so. So we were spreading airborne germs in the room but hopefully in lower concentration than if we'd been right in the thick of things. As far as I know, no one got sick after the trip.

The wait staff took great care of us at our side table. I don't remember if there was pasta, but the secondo was a steak, and it was pretty much on-the-money medium rare and full of grass-fed deliciousness! And then tiramisù for Sweetie (she had missed it the evening before), and an insane chocolate mousse thing for me.

Rare selfie, with Trulli houses

The schedule for the next day was a drive to Lecce for its rich artistic heritage (as our tour book says), way down toward the end of the boot heel, have lunch at a local restaurant, and then to drive back to Ostuni, the "whitewashed city." If we hadn't been feeling like poo, we would have liked to have seen more of Puglia.

Instead, along with three other tired-out folks, we stayed behind at the Masseria, spent a lazy morning, had an amazing salmon crudo salad and porky pasta for lunch, then later took a walk through the olive trees. They're pruned small, but you can tell by their gnarly trunks that they're quite old. Lecce and Ostuni were great, I'm sure, but we needed and enjoyed our day off.

Despite the room being huge but empty, the log desk being nearly impossible to write at, and the bathroom having no where to hang or put anything, we really enjoyed our stay at Masseria Santa Teresa. We were sorry to leave it at 3 am to be driven to Bari Airport for a flight to Rome and the beginning of our interminable homeward journey that you do not want to hear about.

(The disease was just a cold, albeit a nasty one. I did a COVID rapid test as soon as I got home and it came up negative.)

Pancho stealing focus from the olive trees

 

City of stone

Name that style

It was day 13 of the tour (counting the travel day). We were getting a bit stretched. When I write about the free time we had and took, it seems like a lot, but most of the tour was full and briskly paced.

We had a long drive ahead of us to get to our final stopping point. I wasn't up for bus games, so I put in the buds and listened to music on my phone. Lots of agricultural countryside, and red poppies splashed onto green grass fields. Somewhere in there we were pulled over at a police checkpoint to verify everything was in proper order on the tour coach (show of power, really). We crossed into the region of Basilicata near the sea and then drove inland and upward to Matera.

Sassi across the ravines

Basilicata, the instep of the boot, is a rather obscure region with only two provinces, Potenza and Matera. I don't see a lot about Basilicata, not like Calabria or Puglia or Campania or even Molise, neighbouring regions. Knowing so little about the region and nothing about Matera, I was thinking this was basically a drive-through on our way to Puglia. Instead, it was one of the most profound experiences of the tour.

It did not begin profoundly. We arrived in the modern city of Matera, a perfectly fine city, then walked with a local guide into the baroque city, a perfectly fine baroque city. The guide was extolling the architectural features of this baroque city, and yes, it looked great. But we had seen a lot of baroque architecture. I took pictures, but I guess I was past being excited by baroque style at that point. Plus there were molti ragazzi ovunque.

Sassi up the slope

And then, behind the baroque city, at the eastern edge of Matera, we came to the Sassi, a city of caves. I had never seen a place like it before. Sassi means "stones." It's  made up of two great ravines, Sasso Caveoso and Sasso Barisano, with caves dug into the rock and clay on all sides. Later, houses were built to extend the caves. It's a jumble of caves and buildings and streets extending deep into the ravines, reached by steep streets and long staircases. There is evidence of continuous habitation in and near the ravines for 9000 years. Even now that puts me in awe.

Before we descended, we fueled up at La Grotta della Petrarola, purveyor of prodotti tipici lucani (Lucania is an older name for Basilicata). Lunch that day consisted of samples of their wares. They were excellent quality products, just not quite enough quantity. We must have got used to all those big lunches. They sold the group plenty of prodotti tipici for later (taralli al pomodoro secco, yum).

Far side of the ravine

Then, with a different local guide, we descended into the Sassi themselves. The guide did a great job giving us the history and background of what we were seeing. As late as the 1950s, people were still living in the caves as their ancestors had done, huddled in windowless holes with animals sharing the space and providing heat. There were more remote caves on the far edge of the second ravine, some once used by hermits, as well as tiny churches. The Sassi is loaded with churches, a hundred or more, many no longer in use.

In Carlo Levi's memoir Christ Stopped at Eboli, Levi's physician sister describes what she saw in the Sassi in 1935. She said she was used to working in impoverished urban conditions but was unprepared for the level of destitution she saw among the inhabitants of the Sassi. In the 1950s, the area was considered a national shame. The grey day played into the profound sadness of the place as it had once been, a place where for countless generations people grew up and grew old without any hope of their lives changing for the better.

Not one church but in fact two

Today, the Sassi is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. As is the way of things, it's even becoming hip. Tourists can eat and drink and stay there. And yet the Sassi retains much of what has long been there. If you see a chimney popping out of the surface you're walking on, you know that someone's house is below. The streets will always be steep and winding, and there will be stairs. Much of the infrastructure will remain embedded in the bones of the land.

We visited the Casa Grotta nei Sassi di Matera, a model cave house. It seemed...not bad? But it was a cleaned-up, somewhat idealized cave, and not cohabited by animals. Also lit with electricity. We also went into a cave church nearby called Chiesa rupestre di Sant'Agostino al Casalnuovo (rupestre means "rocky").

The untouched-by-time look of the Sassi make them a popular film location. Sweetie remembered that a car chase from the James Bond film No Time to Die was filmed there. So were Pier Paolo Pasolini's The Gospel According to St. Matthew and Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ.

I don't know why the Sassi affected me so deeply. I felt like I was immersed in a very long history, a place where people lived for millennia before Phoenicians and Greeks and Romans came, and a history that was often painful.

Cavernous kitchen

Shortly after I got home, I borrowed Christ Stopped at Eboli from the library and read it in about a week. It was an immersive read. (The memoir is mostly about the villages of Gagliano and Grassano where the author was internally exiled for being antifascist, as penetrating as the story of the Sassi di Matera.)

Before we left Matera, our amazing and wonderful trip guru bought delicious margherita focaccia from the local guide's favourite place. I might have inhaled one piece and then eaten one more that was going begging. The salt level was perfect.

I don't remember how long the drive was from Matera to the Masseria di Santa Teresa in Monopoli, Puglia. The arrival was certainly memorable. Our indominable driver was seriously challenged getting the coach through the front gate and past scratchy untrimmed olive trees (amendments were later made). Apparently the staff didn't realize we would be arriving in such a large coach.

Masseria means farmhouse. The place was a curious mix of modern and rustic, very eco-minded but not always in a way that worked. The restaurant did work, however, and the delicious vegetarian meal was a harbinger of great food to come.