44 Blog Post, Saturday, October 19, 2024 "Ciao!"

Today is our last day here in Monopoli and it is also the day we went with Peter to the train station, where he continued his Apulian adventures on his own. Words cannot describe how great it has been to have him here, and I give him credit for that. The apartment is not huge and we shared all the spaces (Ie: one bathroom/shower). Privacy is not one of the benefits when staying here. We have increasingly become a society of privacy and personal space, and I am perhaps more guilty than others of claiming space for myself. When Peter leaves here, he will book into a hostel where he will share a room with 3 other people, and I thought “Nope. Not for me!” We have loved spending time with Peter, exploring the city of Monopoli, finding unusual restaurants (shout out to Munz Munz, a vegan restaurant that had some of the best food of our stay.)

While Alistair and I have loved adventures on our own, and we get along well, the times we have spent with family and friends have been my favorite. The adventure ramps up when there are more people involved, and our extended family/friends have shown us places we would not have otherwise seen—Tollymore Forest, Dunnotar Castle, Seal Beach on the coast near Aberdeen with the murmuring seals, Houghton Hall near Norfolk where we saw the Antony Gormley exhibit.

Speaking of that exhibit, art exhibits have been the biggest surprise on this trip, at least for me. While we made plans to specifically see the Big Things—Michelangelo’s “David”, DaVinci’s “Last Supper”, the Vatican collection of art and so many beautiful cathedrals and churches, we have stumbled into exhibits in Venice and other cities where we were able to learn about artists and see different iterations of contemporary art. Here in Monopoli, "PhEST" has been a guiding activity, almost a scavenger hunt for art and artists staged in deconsecrated churches, historic castles and armories built in the 1600’s. What a great use for these often empty spaces to host 34 different visions of the theme “See Beyond the Sea”. I will miss walking around the Old City looking for each venue. (I think we managed to see about 25 of the exhibits while we were here.)

What else I will miss...I will miss the mornings. The man who rattles down the street with three wooden crates full of fresh, ripe tomatoes for his restaurant. The dog that barks when its owner leaves. The Italian people in an apartment behind us somewhere whose voices bubble up to argue, to yell or maybe for them, this is conversation. (Our guide told us the other day that when we hear Italians raising their voices, they are just trying to agree on a place to have dinner.) I will miss the cat on the next terrace over who sits with the green plants and the geraniums and looks wisely down at the world, meowing loudly when she hears her owner arriving. I will miss the morning and evening church bells that ring all around the city. Peter said it sounded like a bell competition when they were all ringing.

I will remember the interesting shape of this apartment with the tufa brick arched overhead, a local stone that most of the city’s buildings are made from. I’ve so appreciated our ability to do laundry that I washed and then hung up on the terrace, like every other person who lives on this street, and the way the sun and the wind from the sea quickly dried everything.

I will miss everything about the harbor, the way the sun shines off the water, the regular line up of red and blue gozzos, the saxophonist who was at least 80 and who played smooth jazz and familiar music, sometimes for hours. Gimmicky? Perhaps, but that man really seemed to love what he was doing.

I will miss seeing the life of the harbor. This week I got to see a fishing boat bring in a whole trove of swordfish, and they unloaded them and weighed them quickly, while lots of ‘regulars’ stood around, watching. Already gutted and ready for market, the swordfish were put into refrigerated trucks for delivery. It reminded me of the CSA Farm I belong to back in Johnstown where the vegetables are harvested, then we pick them up at the farm, and within hours, they are on my table, prepared for dinner. From sea to supper table for a swordfish might be all of 8 hours.

I will miss the curve of the marble streets in the Old City as they slowly head towards the port and the sea, as if all roads begin and end there, which perhaps is true in Monopoli which was first settled in 500 BC as a port city.

I will miss sitting at this square blue table to think and to write, and I will miss my runs by the sea, a sea that changes color as the sky changes, as the weather changes, as the tide changes.

While this has all brought us so much joy, I have become much sicker in the past 24 hours, and honestly, I am not looking forward to our travel to Athens. My gosh, I can’t even read the letters of the hotel where we are staying! Have you ever heard the phrase “It’s all Greek to me!” That phrase refers to the difficulty of understanding the Greek language, and I admit that I am nervous about it. Travel days take a whole lot of energy, and this illness has taken the majority of that energy from me. We have some medications with us, and my hope is that the meds will do some good miracle work. It has settled in my lungs and concerns us with my constant coughing, but I feel pretty well, other than the exhaustion from coughing.

I’m telling you this NOT to get sympathy, but because I am telling you about our real trip, and the real challenges that come up. This is why I couldn’t write a blog last night…too tired and unwell. Certainly I would appreciate any and all prayers, but this is what people have to contend with they travel, especially when they travel for the amount of time we’ve been away. It wouldn’t be a very good blog if I left out the real stuff, right?

I’ll close with a story from yesterday. Peter and Alistair and I went to the city of Polignano by the Sea (Polignano a Mare). This is the same place we traveled by boat to swim and see the caves. While wandering through Polignano, we saw a statue on the main shoreline of a man with his arms spread wide and his coat open and he seemed to be singing. It was a statue of Domenico Modugno, the man who sang “In the Blue Painted Blue”, better know as VOLARE! Modugno was from Polignano, so he was a native son who later went on to serve in the Italian Parliament, so he had more to offer than just a beautiful voice.

Peter translated the two best known words in that song for me: Volare=to fly, and cantate=to sing. I thought that was a fitting way to end our Italian trip, in flight and in song as we travel to Athens tomorrow. Somehow that reminds me of the Psalms—songs that help us raise our words and our prayers to God that are intended to be set to music.

To fly and to sing…may we blessed as we do both tomorrow. I’ll check in when we get to Athens.

Please pray for safe travels, and that my illness gets better so that I can get my energy back. I think Athens is going to require a lot of walking and right now, I’m not sure I can do all that. But by the grace of God and good medicine, the plan is to feel better, be better and to enjoy this final leg of the trip!

What place do you miss that nourishes your heart and your soul?

Peace, grace and healing,

ML+