The wind was fierce again and not conducive to anything but driving around. We started our day with espressi in the restaurant and caught up on work. At 10:30 we headed for Scalea and drove through Praia a Mare. The mountains around there still had lingering smoke from overnight fires.
The concrete of the main road bridge has exposed rebar and one can only hope that they carry out maintenance before another disaster. In Scalea we had espressi at La Quercia and then did our shopping at a really nice Conad. We took the back road into Riserva Statale Valle del Fiume Lao.
From our starting point Mormanno was 9km as the crow flies but 39km of driving. We put in €20 of fuel (11.77l) as we entered the town and the elevation was 792.7m. It’s really easy to refuel this way when instructions are given in English 😂. First put in your cash or card. Then select the pump and then put in the fuel. If you’ve used cash the machine stops automatically once the amount has been reached. Once we had petrol in the car we climbed the through the town and found the highest bar, 866.9m above sea level, Bar Gelateria.
A quick espressi break and down the mountain we went. We had our picnic lunch in Castelluccio Inferiore and another espresso stop at Billy Bar in Lauria.
We then drove back to Maratea and had gelato from Bar Avigliano. Dave had pistacchio and I went for Cioccolato.
After shopping for supper stuff we came back to the apartment and headed down to the restaurant for espressi and to connect to the wifi. I could not get on and I hope that issue resolves itself by morning. After Dave finished his work we had prosecci and came back to the apartment to eat supper. We played two rounds of backgammon and had an early night. Driving days are not good exercise days. 5847 steps and 3.02km.
Italy 2018 