El and I went to the town of Monopoli today. It is about 40 minutes by train outside of Bari and we thought it would be a quick day trip. We had an errand to run this morning before we left, but that wasn’t going to be an issue...or so we thought. The game plan last night when we went to bed was to get up, make one stop at 10am and get to the train station. El has signed up for a 10K run tomorrow and today was the packet pickup starting at 10am. We would walk to the spot, put the bag of stuff in our backpacks and continue on to the train station. There are so many trains to Monopoli (about three an hour) that we would have plenty of time once we got into town to sightsee and eat. I had spent some time in recent days figuring out where we could eat lunch. We try not to just show up to a town and guess at a good lunch spot (this usually leads to an hour or more of saying “do you want to try here?” Followed by “no, let’s see what’s down the next street”...and repeated until one of us says “we have been walking for an hour, I am hungry, let’s just at here”- which then turns out to be subpar. So, the getting up part went OK, but then things started to derail our schedule. El got an email reminding her that her Italian SIM card was set to expire tomorrow and she had 24 hours to recharge the card. No sweat. She logged into the site and tried to pay, but the site does not accept her card. Now we need to add a quick stop at the phone store to pay in person. OK, that can’t take too long...right? We'll stop at the phone store, get the packet, then get to the station. Then it hits me that my SIM card expires tomorrow, and I will need to do the same thing tomorrow. But, tomorrow is Palm Sunday and with the Easter preparations going on in this country, I will not be surprised if the phone store is closed tomorrow. We need to stop at my phone store, then go to your phone store, then pick up the packet, and then get to the train station. Yesterday’s plan was to be at the packet pickup- which we still had to find- by 10am. We were now leaving the house at 11:15! My phone store took 15 minutes. The walk to El’s phone store and get her card paid (in person the card worked, just not on the website for some reason) another 15 minutes. Map the location of the packet pickup...15 minutes there, 5 minutes to get the packet, 15 minutes back to the train station. We make it onto the 1:35 train, arriving at Monopoli at 2:15. Keeping our eye on the time, while on the train we decided to call the restaurant I picked to see if 2:30 was going to be too late for us to sit (most restaurants close around 3:00 and reopen around 8:00pm). The news is not good. The restaurant says they have no availability at 2:30. They don’t go into detail why, just that we can’t get in. Both hungry, I started racking my brain for other spots that were under consideration for our lunch stop. I map the top three from the train station and choose the closest one. Luckily, they are willing to seat us after an 8 minute walk. We each get a pasta dish and split one meat dish. The food is very good and I am glad this did not result in a wandering lookout for a lunch. After lunch we head to the main church in town. Katrina told us about the beauty inside and El makes her way in. She takes a few photos, but being that tomorrow is Palm Sunday there is a program that was causing the church to close to visitors minutes after she arrived. Meanwhile, I was doing some research of my own...and if you know me at all, you know I like weird. You know I like macabre. So, when I learned that there was a Church of Purgatory not 100 meters away, I wanted to know more. I read on and see they have bones and mummified people in display cases dressed in matching clothing- we were all over it. For some reason this church is only open from 4-6pm and we are within these parameters. We make the quick walk, go in: mouth shut, eyes open. Always a little strange to see a church with paintings of skeletons and depictions of bones throughout the artwork and actual building structure. We sit at a pew and soak in the beauty of the room and do some quick research on the church. I don’t see any dead people, but I assume they have to be around here somewhere. I take off to explore. Within moments I found the room with no less than six mummies and one embalmed baby. Each labeled with a name and date of death circa 1780’s, but no further info is given as to community position or circumstance of demise. We have no idea who these people were or what their association is with this church. All we know is that they are dead, and according to the sign, photography is OK as long as flash is not used. Some may think it is inappropriate or disrespectful for me to take a selfie with the dead, but it can’t be any more disrespectful than propping up the mummified remains of a person in a glass case, so my conscience is clear. After doing our thing inside, we move to the outside to admire the details of the facade.
One last shot of the street sign for Purgatory Street before we continued off to a dessert place we heard was good. We make our way to Cafe Vienna and get cappuccinos and a pistachio creme dessert. We look up the train schedule to get us back to Bari and it is almost a two hour wait. We agreed to head back to the station, confirm the next train arrival, and then head to a café in the area to wait out our time. The weather is starting to turn, making us just as happy that we are calling it a day.
It is cheap enough and close enough that if we want to head back to Monopoli for a day trip, we can...though we will try harder to stick to the schedule we plan for ourselves.
So interesting! I just love my vicarious travels with Sim and El! And so impressed that El is running 10Ks on the lark.
ReplyDelete