Weekend Trip

We knew it was time for a weekend adventure. We walk everywhere in Rome, we don’t have a car. While the kids are in school, we go to museums and churches – because we know there’s no way they’ll go with us. However, we felt we needed a weekend with some wheels beneath us to explore the countryside.

So we pulled out our stash of magazines and maps. My husband knew of an ancient Greek temple in Paestum. We located it on the map – about an hour and a half south of Napoli. Good! An area we haven’t been to yet. We went online and read a bit of history of the area, found a hotel in nearby Agropoli, and booked a car. We’re good to go!

Because of the Autostrada, the drive to Agropoli was a fast one – about 3½ hours. To enter, each car takes a ticket from a toll booth, which is marked with your location. The Autostrada is usually two lanes, but around the larger metropolitan areas, there are more. The slow traffic (large trucks) drive in the slow lane on the right, the fast cars drive in the middle lane and the very fast cars drive in the very fast lane on the left. If a fast car is in the very fast lane, they get over quickly when a very fast car comes up on their butt. It’s not like American highways at all! There’s no grandpa who drives slow in the fast lane because he pays his taxes and will drive in any lane that he damn well chooses. If you are not very fast, you get over. I love it! When you leave the Autostrada, you pay your usage fee at a toll booth. It cost us 14 Euro to drive from Rome to Salerno.

We pulled into a service area along the Autostrada for diesel and had a slice of pizza at the Autogrill. These service areas are great! They have cash machines, restaurants or “fast food”, bathrooms, and gas stations. Everything you need to take a break from the road. One stop we were at was like a Target – they had slippers, clothing, music books, games, etc.

Hotel la Colombaia is located in the hills behind Agropoli. To see gorgeous and realistic photos of the hotel, go to, www.lacolombaiahotel.it. Thankfully, my husband wrote down directions, so we found it pretty easily. We were greeted by Luigi, a molto gentile manager. Molto gentile, in Italian, means very kind. He gave us our room keys, let us know where his room was, in case we had any difficulties.

In the morning, we walked out of our room into a garden set above a beautiful swimming pool. In the distance is the sea. Agropoli is a coastal town. We went down to the outdoor cabana along side the pool, for a blue sky breakfast. Honestly, we could have stayed there all day and forgotten the Greek ruins. However, we are in Italy for history and adventure, so Luigi tells us the best places to go for our day of sightseeing. We let him know we’ll join him and our fellow hotel guests for dinner.

Our first stop was Paestum. We knew there was “a Doric ruin”, but what we found was an ENTIRE Greek town, founded in 600 B.C. (over 2,500 years old), in ruins! It was awesome! We walked all through the town, walked right through homes, businesses, theatres, a mini colusseum (2/3 of it is still underground) and walked around the three Doric (Greek) temples. There are still beautiful, intact mosaic floors in some of the homes! Truly amazing!

What was interesting about this town, which we learned in the museum across the street, was that the town was in ruins for over 1,000 years and was rediscovered in the late 1700’s. That’s why so much of it is well preserved. Also, they didn’t have one burial area outside of the town – where looters could easily dig up funerary items (coins, vases, jewelry, armor, etc.) Their burial areas are all over, right in the town (kinda creepy!). Many of the tombs have been excavated and placed in the museum, but I’m sure there’s plenty more. Another point of interest - we were able to walk though this town, but it is only about one-fourth the size of the actual walled city. There is plenty more to excavate, but I’m sure it would be very expensive to do so.

We were so blown away/overwhelmed by Paestum, we were there for over three hours, so we all decided we were done “exploring” for the day. We drove up into Capaccio for lunch (we overheard a guy telling a family to go for lunch there) at Ristorante Il Giardino di Bacco. It’s a huge complex, built on a hill overlooking Paestum, so the views of the rolling countryside and sea were incredible. However, we were the ONLY people there for lunch. This place can easily hold a couple of hundred. We all enjoyed handmade pasta with the local tomato sauce, which wasn’t salted.

Historically, the Romans placed a tax on salt. The northern tribes refused to pay the tax, so they left salt out of their bread and other recipes, only using it where most needed (meat preservation). The southern tribes paid the tax, so to this day, their recipes contain salt. Also to this day, the bread in the north is without salt. Anyhoo, I was surprised there wasn’t salt in our sauce.

After lunch, we went back to La Colombaia for some pool time and rest before dinner.

Dinner was delicious. We began with a local, yellow melon served with prosciutto. Then, we tucked into our pasta with the local sauce with a bit of pancetta. Fortunately, our hotel provided Parmesan to add a bit more flavor, which we all appreciated. A mixed green salad followed (the carrots were so sweet!), then the much anticipated, mozzarella di bufala with tomatoes.

Campania, the region we were in, is the home of the most prized Water Buffalos. The milk of the Campania Water Buffalo, is highly revered in Italy. It is considered most pure (many dairies are organic), high in nutrition, and smooth in taste. The dairies produce mozzarella di bufala as well as many other cheeses, ricotta, etc., for the entire country and abroad.

We luckily, happened upon Caseificio Capodifiume – an organic dairy. We bought four small ovals (one oval serves four easily) of fresh mozzarella and three different varieties of cheese – one is aged and smoked, one contains spicy red peppers and the other is rolled with prosciutto and green olives. These yummy cheeses will not last long!

On Sunday, we enjoyed another gorgeous, leisure breakfast, then our son played in the pool before we checked out. We highly recommend Hotel La Colombaia! The rooms are spacious, spotless and very inexpensive. Luigi said their area is not well known to tourists (shocking!) so their prices are lower. We would definitely like to return, as there are other historic sites in the area as well. We drove down into Agropoli, took a few pictures of a tower erected for St. Francis during his southern pilgrimage, hopped onto the Autostrada and returned to our very modern life in Rome.