Catana, Matera

After a couple of days rest in Catana, a university town in Sicily, we took two plane flights and a train ride to Matera in southern Italy. This will be the beginning of our one-week self-guided tour supported by Siciclando. We were issued our bikes and route maps today. Our luggage will be moved for us as we change hotels throughout the tour. Two of the pictures for today are from some gardens in Catana. I posted the one of the cactus because I have never seen one in bloom outside of my home. The other is a “garden clock”, which I thought was pretty clever. The other two pictures are from Matera. Matera is a medieval cave town. The old homes were a collection of cave dwellings and remodeled grottos. An ingenious system of canals regulated the flow of water and sewage throughout the caves to make them successful dwellings until the 20th century. Then the population dramatically increased and overwhelmed the systems. Diseases spread and the infant mortality increased to 50%. The Italian government intervened in the 1950s and moved the town's residents out of the caves into more traditional housing. Now the cave housing has been modernized for preservation and tourism. One of the pictures is the focal point of the town, a duomo sassi. The other is attempt to show the odd mixture of cave material and “tufa” (limestone) that make up the buildings. Of course, Anne happens to be posing in the picture ;)