Day 32: Capo Rizzuto & Reggio Di Calabria, Italy

We started the day by taking a very expensive taxi ride to Capo Rizzuto, about 20 km from Crotone. The day before we spent about a half hour with the hotel staff trying to figure out a way to get to Capo Rizzuto ("Capo"), and arranged to have a taxi driver pick us up in the morning, drive us to Capo, and wait for us with our bags for a few hours while we explored the castle and shops.

Capo is another beach/resort town. It's beautiful with SAND beaches and it's for Italian tourists, not American or English, so it's different than, e.g., Sorrento. I (Kevin) was wondering why my ancestors (I'm assuming at some point my family can be traced back to Capo) would ever leave here (maybe invading barbarians). (3 parentheticals in one sentence, I thin that's my record).

We stopped for a cafe before the castle and a tropical drink after, then headed to the train station to leave for Reggio di Calabria. However, a stupid delayed Italian train made us miss our connection, now it's been two days in a row that we've spent 5 hours doing a 3 hour train ride... An accidental ordering of a 9% beer made the delay a little easier to handle.

When we arrived at our B&B, we were greeted by the owner explaining in English that he was overbooked. He had already arranged another B&B for us around the block and the husband, wife, and 2 year old were in a car waiting on the street to drive us there. So we hop in with the non-English speaking family and drive around the block failing in our attempts to converse. You could tell they family knew the neighborhood, they even slowed down for their two year old, Jackamo to say "Ciao!" out the window to the newstand salesmen. On top of the ride, we ended up staying in what is probably a nicer place for our one night in Reggio.

We dumped our gear and headed for the main pedestrian strip that Posti told us about. About 5 minutes into the walk we realized we really needed another day in Reggio (and we were mad again for losing the 2 hours in the train station). It's got a number of shops and restaurants, it is clean, has sand beaches, and although there are tourists, it maintains good local character. Along the walk we could see Sicily (we didn't know it was that close) and all ages of Italians slowly strolling along (seems to be the thing to do in Southern Italy).

Although Capo was cool, not sure if we'll go back (but if we do we'll rent a car). But we'll have to come back to Reggio...