We then had a delicious lunch with both mozzarella and ricotta cheeses that were produced right there on the farm!
My favorite experience in nature was actually a place where nature and culture meet! In the city of Matera, the oldest continuously inhabited city in Italy, many people used to live in cave dwellings until the 1950s. Often families of up to eight people lived in one cave along with their livestock, making the hygiene in the caves very poor. In the 1950s, the Italian government built new apartments for these people and forced them to leave the caves.
Now, 70 years later, many of the caves have been renovated with electricity, running water, and wifi and are now used as hotel rooms and guesthouses. So, everyone in our tour group was able to sleep in a luxury cave! My cave was particularly large a beautiful with two beds, two couches, and a bathtub with jets in it.
It was strange to think that these caves used to be difficult places to live, but now are so fun to inhabit for a visit!
While we were staying in the fishing town of Vieste on the Adriatic Coast, we took a boat tour of several grottos (sea caves) that have formed in the limestone. One is called the “Grotto di Pomodori,” meaning “Cave of Tomatoes.” It turns out, there are small red sea anemones called “sea tomatoes” that look like cherry tomatoes on the walls of the cave. In the past, fisherman would use these seas tomatoes to dye their nets red, which better attracted the squid they were trying to catch.
What a strange and wonderful world we live in!
