Massafra & Crypt of the Candelora

We visited the town of Massafra yesterday. Massafra is an interesting town that is located on a hillside and overlooks the Ionian sea to the west.

This is where the Crypt of the Candelora is located.  This is an ancient cliff cave with beautiful frescoes on the inside, made by...you guessed it...Candeloras. This is a picture of the ancient crypts from the outside.

Due to where it is located we were not able to access the caves. Nothing like traveling around the world to see something and being blocked by an iron gate. We will be going back to try again. This expedition got a big thumbs down.



We also learned yesterday, that NOBODY and I mean NOBODY in this part of the world speaks English. They'll tell you they do, but they don't. Our Italian is terrible, so it's hard to figure out some things. When we were inquiring about access to the Crypts, a little old Italian man actually laughed at us and said, "You have a beautiful name, but you know nothing." Yup, that's about right.

We did find the Candelora road that leads to the Crypt of the Candelora (see below).

Some photos of the roads.  Quite the driving experience!

The Town of Alberobello

The town of Alberobello is a crazy neat town comprised of hundreds of connected trulli (plural for trullo) filled with cafes, shops and restaurants. It is a UNESCO world heritage site. Our trullo lies a couple miles outside of this town.

Antony in front of St Antony at the trullo Cathedral of St Anthony in Alberobello

Pictures of the Trullo

A trullo is an ancient cone-shaped home built of limestone, common in the southern Puglia region of Italy. They are quite charming. We feel like Snow White and the 7 Dwarfs. There is an itty bitty kitchen. The cone ceilings are hard to capture in picture.

Our home for the next week.

We are surrounded by olive groves and vineyards. Better pictures to come. We're still shaking off the long trip, and just getting started.

Plane pics and our first stop while travelling 5 hours to our Trullo.

Actually shocked at how good the kids were. These two slept the majority of the 10 hour flight.

Oh ya, rocking the "minibus," with one completely exhausted crying 5-year-old who refuses to look at the camera. We just ate fresh homemade pasta at a gas station, seriously.

Our Scudo

Perfect for the Candelora gang.  How do shift into reverse??  Oh wait, you must pull up on the shift lever.  Duh... Driving out of Rome was an adventure in this European stick shift.

On the ground in Italy

10 hours later and we arrived in Rome!  Flight was long but not too bad.  Luccio actually slept most of the way.  Angelo, not so much.  Everyone else watched more movies than needed.