September 22, 2023 • 51 mins
Benvenuti to the Cilento Coast - this beautiful area just south of the Amalfi Coast is sitting there in plain sight waiting to be discovered. Beautiful beaches, ancient ruins, life changing buffalo mozzarella cheese.. what's not to love! We're re-running this episode as part of a series of favorites while we take a short break.. in Italy of course!
Read the full episode show notes here > untolditaly.com/192
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The Untold Italy travel podcast is an independent production. Podcast Editing, Audio Production and Website Development by Mark Hatter. Production Assistance and Content Writing by the other Katie Clarke - yes there are two of us!
Read the full episode show notes here > untolditaly.com/192
Support the show
Join our mailing list and get our FREE Italy trip planning checklist - subscribe here | Join us on tour: Trip schedule | Discover our Trip Planning Services | Visit our online store | Follow: Instagram • Facebook • YouTube • Italy Travel Planning Community
The Untold Italy travel podcast is an independent production. Podcast Editing, Audio Production and Website Development by Mark Hatter. Production Assistance and Content Writing by the other Katie Clarke - yes there are two of us!
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
This is the Untold Italy Travel podcastand you're listening to episode number one hundred
and ninety two. Tatuti and benVenuti to one Told Italy, the travel
podcast to where you go to thetownsend villages, mountains, the lakes,
(00:21):
hills and coast lines of Bella,Italia. Each week, your host Katie
Clark takes you on a journey ina search of magical landscapes, history,
culture, wine, zelato, andof course a whole lot of pasta.
If you're dreaming of Italy and planningfuture adventures there, you've come to the
right place. Ben Venutti Chow friends, I'm so excited to share another favorite
(00:56):
episode with you today, and it'sthe one that sparked the Italian adventure that
I'm currently on, staying on thestunning Chilento Coast in southern Italy. In
this episode, I chat with myfriend DANIELLEA Terry, who I will have
met in person for the very firsttime just a few short days before this
recording airs, and I'm so excited. The Chilento Coast is not far from
(01:19):
the Amalfi Coast and it's here whereyou'll find the Italian coastline of your dreams
without the crowds, not to mentionthe famous, the very famous, life
changing buffalo mozzarella cheese. So here'sone of my favorite episodes of all time,
and I hope inspires you to visitthere too. Cha Danielle ben Venuti
(01:40):
and welcome to the Untold Italy podcast. Hey Katie, thanks for having me.
Oh, it's so exciting to haveyou here. Now, Danielle,
before I go ahead and ask youall the many many questions I have about
the Chilento coast, could you pleaselet our listeners know something about yourself and
your background. Well, I'm anartist storian by training. I live in
(02:00):
New York City and I'm the founderof feast On History tours in the Chilento
region, and my background is inthat region. My grandmother came from the
town of Capacho, where our toursare based, and I grew up hearing
her stories my entire life about thislittle town. And so when I actually
got to go the first time,I think I was about nineteen or twenty
(02:23):
years old, it was really likewalking around in a storybook. And now
many many years later, it stillfeels that way to me. It's those
family connections are always so strong,aren't they often in Italy and it's a
really amazing way to connect yourself tothe country. But where exactly is the
Chillento Coast. It's an area ofItaly that even some Italians may not be
(02:47):
familiar with, though they might befamiliar with some of the landmarks that are
there. So Chillento is in theregion of Campania. So if you're saying
Lento in Campania, it's kind oflike you're referring to the Hudson Valley in
New York State, for example.And it's just a little bit south of
the Amalfi Coast as about an hourand a half from Naples if you're driving,
(03:09):
So if you are going to Chlento, that's probably where you're going to
fly in, about thirty minutes southof Salerno, and it encompasses both the
coastline and the interior mountains as well, where there's some very very beautiful and
remote, difficult to reach villages.Amazing. So you said it's really close
(03:30):
to the Maufie coast. Does thatmean it's got a spectacular coastline too,
It really does, but it's donenearly as built up. So from the
place where we are based. Mycousins in Italy have a hotel there and
that's where our tours are based.So if you're standing at the hotel,
you're facing the Trhanian Sea. Ifyou look to your right, you see
(03:53):
the Amalfi Coast and the Gulf ofSalerno, and then if you look to
your left, it's the Chlento coast. So probably all like the same coastline,
except that the Chalento Coast is notnearly as built up, and there's
also no cruise ships. It's anational park, so it's a much more
natural, much more pristine coastline.The water is a lot cleaner, the
(04:15):
beaches are a lot cleaner. There'snot you know, splashy hotels and yachts
pulling up and celebrities everywhere, butthat's also part of its charm. Yeah,
it does sound amazing, and Iunderstand that coastline was used as a
setting for the Wonder Woman movie.It was well, my husband and I
were actually watching that movie and I'mstaring at the scene where they're sort of
(04:41):
surrounded by all those giant rocks,and I went, wait a minute.
I pulled up my phone and Iimmediately began googling I'm like, I don't
know where it is. Yeah,well, I think if it's good enough
the Diana princes, and it's probablygood enough for us. Absolutely. Yeah,
it's it's kind of an undiscovered gem. I think a lot of Italians
(05:03):
have actually been really discovering it thisyear because they've been doing most of their
traveling inside of Italy for their summerholidays. So I was just speaking with
my cousin yesterday and she said thatthey were filled with Italians all of August,
which is not normally the case.So I think other Italians as well
are discovering this little piece of paradise. Oh, it does sound amazing.
(05:27):
And you mentioned that those mountains aswell, what mountain ranges are they?
It's all part of the Lento NationalPark. Well a little bit on the
other side you have the Apennines,the very beginning of them that they It's
also part of an area of Italycalled the Valdi Diano. It sort of
goes into the interior, very ruggedregion of Basilicata. So on the sort
(05:51):
of northeast side of Lento, theinland side of it borders it turns into
Basilicata, so similar terrain to Matteafor example, and it's an area that
you know, it's pretty poor.There aren't that many young people there anymore
because there are just so few jobs. But it's really spectacular for people who
(06:14):
are interested in hiking and mountain biking. That's a very big thing in that
area. It's filled with these littlewhat they called ghost villages, these places
that were thriving little villages and reallykind of emptied out when emigration from Italy
in the twenties and the thirties reallyaccelerated. And so when you go to
(06:35):
some of these little small towns andyou tell them that you're from the United
States, they'll, you know,some old lady will say, ah,
do you know the last name Rosariobecause my cousin left in nineteen thirty five,
And then she'll name some very specifictown in the New York area,
and yeah, you actually know exactlywhat she's talking about. Oh, I
(06:58):
love ice connections, fantasti and soyou've got all these natural beauty around.
So I guess that's what the mainthings that to do in this area.
But I understand is also a lotof history too. The biggest site to
see there are the temples at Pestum, so southern Italy was all part of
Greece. It was a Greek colony, the Mania grecas what it's called by
(07:20):
historians, and so there was acity founded they are called Postidonia in the
sixth century BC, so Postidonia beingthe city of Poseidon, and starting in
the sixth century BC, there werea series of four temples. Three of
them are still standing. One ofthem was completely destroyed and sunk into the
(07:42):
marsh, though lots of fragments fromit have been found. So these are
the three most intact Greek temples inthe world. They're not in Greece,
they're in Italy, but of coursethis was Greece and they sort of an
unlikely survival. So it was aGreek city that became a Lukanyan city.
(08:03):
Lukanyans were this sort of tribe ofpeople from central Italy. Then it became
a Roman city and the entire sitewhere all the temples stood became also residential.
The Romans built their homes right onthe temple complex, and then eventually
in the early Middle Ages, thesite became abandoned because there were pirates from
(08:28):
North Africa who were raiding the coast, and also the area was very malarial.
It was very marshy and swampy,and after the people that lived on
the temples moved up the hill tothe town of Capacho, it really sort
of just sunk into the marsh andwas sort of protected by neglect. And
(08:50):
there was a lot of buffalo thatwere actually grazed there. Buffalo or naturally
immune to malaria. They were actuallybrought to Italy by the Romans, and
so the locals kind of always knewabout custom and there were people that were
doing some sort of farming and agriculturein that region, but in that area,
but it really wasn't habitable, andit was in the seventeen hundreds when
(09:13):
they were kind of really rediscovered.The Bourbons sort of brought people from the
Grand Tour down there, writers likeGurtha for example. There were a lot
of engravings done of them at thattime. But oddly enough, they really
came back to life when Mussolini drainedthe swamp literally curatively. Yeah, they
(09:37):
began a huge project to drain thesewaters and the temples were revealed again,
and you know, intermittently there's beenarchaeological work done there, but they really
are the glory of this region.Today. So a lot of people,
if they're on the Amalfi coast,will frequently do a day trip to past
them. And if there's you know, there are a lot of people that
(09:58):
will say, I've never heard ofSalento. Oh, but I've been to
pest them, not realizing that thatis sort of the first town that you
will reach when you come to thearea called Salento. And I believe you
can actually walk among the temples reallyand get really really close. Yeah,
you've always been able to walk allover the temple complex, and you know,
(10:18):
it's pretty amazing. You have mosaicpieces right underneath your feet. You
walk around in the basin of theold swimming pool, you can see the
little holes in the ground which werethe cisterns and the bathrooms of the room
and homes. But about I'm goingto see two or three years ago now,
Yeah, they have a new museumdirector who has done a lot of
(10:41):
really wonderful things about making the siteaccessible, including making a wheelchair accessible.
But he did open up two ofthe temples two people actually walking on them
and it is a thrilling experience,it really is, because, of course
they're so massive and you get tostand very close to them normally, but
there's something about walking on them andbeing inside that just is overwhelming. That
(11:05):
they're just tremendous, tremendous pieces ofarchitecture, and to think about how old
they are is almost incomprehensible. Yeah, amazing. I think that two and
a half thousand years old, aren'tthey? Yeah, one of them is
about three thousand years old. Ohwow. Yeah, I mean I've been
to the site at Tagigento and thatwas amazing, but you can't actually walk
(11:28):
inside the temple, so this mustbe just just giving me shivers thinking about
it. Actually, And they're farlarger than the ones that I give be
Gento too. Wow, they're prettybig. Yeah, no, these are
and those these dwarf those I wentlast summer. I went to Geno right
after being at Pestom and I waslike, oh, these are tiny.
(11:48):
It sounds ridiculous, but yeah,it's true. That's incredible. On now
I've got big, big regrets aboutnot stopping there, but I believe there's
some amazing mosaics in there as well. Is there's one that I was reading
about about the Tomb of the Diver, which is yeah, the Tomb of
(12:09):
the Diver is one of the Lukanyantombs. So the Lucanians are really,
I think, kind of an understudiedgroup of people. And I realized my
own roots coming from this area.When I looked at these tombs and there's
these very realistic portraits of people,I'm like, oh, these guys are
my ancestors. So there was awhole series of tombs, a whole necropolis
(12:33):
that was excavated in the nineteen sixtiesand this is the area where the Lukanyans,
the wealthy lu Kanyans, had theirtombs. And so imagine a person
being buried in the ground, butthen being surrounded by four slabs, so
like a coffin that's much larger thanthe body itself, and then each of
the four slabs painted with different scenes, some depicting passage to the underworld.
(12:58):
There's some there's one in particular that'sso beautiful where you see sort of an
elder greeting the person who has justdied and sort of clasping their hands.
And the faces are they look likeItalians that you see walking around the streets
of anywhere in Kobania today. It'stremendous and the two of the Diver is
one of those, and it's animage of a young man diving, except
(13:20):
that he's not diving into a bodyof water. He's sort of diving into
the great unknown. And these tombsare all excavated in the sixties. There's
actually a lot of theft that happenedat that time. There are some of
these tombs which are in major museumsaround the world which I will not name
at the moment, that probably shouldgive them back, but the museum at
(13:46):
past Him has not been able tointegrate them into their regular display. I
believe that's something that they're planning on. They have them all in storage vaults,
but during the summer months and duringcertain other times a year when there's
a lot more tourism, they willactually open up the vaults for appointments and
you can go down there and seethem, and they are really amazing and
(14:09):
I can't wait till they're eventually onmore public display because they're so vivid.
You really get a sense of life. This is in the third century BC.
It just blows my mind that thathas such longevity when we were leaving
such a much more can I say, like consumer disposable culture and you just
(14:31):
wind up from our life. What'sgoing to be left, you know,
things of life, so many thingsthat they're gonna have to sort through and
be like, what was up withthese water bottles? I hope they don't
last that long. That'll be trade. Yeah, I don't know. They
might a lot of Starbucks cups,oh deah. But I think you know,
(14:56):
the whole attitude to longevity and longlife and just taking a slower pace.
It's it's really part of the culturethere, isn't it. Yeah,
Chileans it was actually known for veryvery old people, people who lived to
a very steamed age and are notjust old but are healthy. And you've
(15:18):
really see this when you move alongthe coast. So from Pestum, Capacho
is the town in the mountains.Pestum is the town on the coast.
It's actually like a combined township,and that's kind of your entry into the
Cilento. And then as you godeeper it gets more rural, it gets
more traditional. And then so movingalong the coast, you go to a
(15:39):
Gropuli, which is a much moremodern town where you're going to go shopping
and you know, go out fora good dinner. There's a Nichelin starred
restaurant there, and then you justkeep going Caste Labate, pop down to
Polynuro, and you get to theselittle, tiny fishing villages that are just
(16:00):
most untouched by the modern world.And whenever you drive into one of these
towns, and you know a lotof people go there in the summer to
go to the beach, you'll seealways a group of older people sitting in
the piazza. Very rarely, youknow, very often they don't even have
teeth, maybe because they grew upin an age when they didn't have a
lot of things like dental care whenthey were children. But you see some
(16:23):
lady who looks like she's in hereighties get up and climb up a hill
with so much more agility than Ihave, and you see that there are
these social connections. You know,people that eat diets that are just pretty
much vegetables, olive oil and fish, that just have a very very natural,
easy, stress free lifestyle. Sothere's sort of a joke in Chlento
(16:44):
they say the password to life inthe Lento is piano piano, which means
slowly, slowly, And it's true. People seem like allergic to stress I
mean, when I show up Ilive in Manhattan, it takes me a
wild calm down, especially because I'musually coming through from Naples and Naples is
a crazy city like New York is, so it always takes me a few
(17:07):
days to sort of drop my energydown to the local rhythm. And when
I do, I'm like, oh, this is how you live to be
a ripe old age, not theway I'm doing it normally. But you
know, if you show up inyour sort of frenetic and full of energy,
they will just look at you ina way that is it's not condescending,
but it's kind of like calm down, and you do, and it
(17:30):
works, and you know, it'ssort of soothing, and it's a very
very unique life. I think,you know, even again, Northern Italians
will come and see this as acuriosity because life in Milan or Bologna is
also very busy in frenetic and therehave been researchers working in Chalentzo specifically in
two seventeen, I believe a groupof researchers from Sweden who had conducted a
(17:56):
long study where they actually swapped outa group of Swede with a group of
people from lento and put them inthe opposite places to see if this had
an effect on their health. Theyalso have been studying a particular kind of
rosemary that grows wild there that peopleput on a lot of their food,
and they suspect that there's something inthe oil of this rosemary that might have
(18:18):
something to do with longevity. Butreally they also think there's something in their
gut biome that is much better offat warding, that's much better at warding
off disease. There's a lot ofscientific stuff which I've read, and you
know, I'm not a scientist.I don't fully understand it, but having
spent enough time there, I'm goingto say it's because these people just reject
(18:40):
stress in all of its form,and staying calm is such a virtue to
them. Yeah. I mean,I can sign up to sitting in the
piazza in the sun for you know, weeks even. It sounds amazing to
me right now. Yeah, Andyou know it makes sense because my grandmother
was like that. She was shereally saw stress, like especially stress around
(19:02):
a time of eating, to justbe like, you can't do that,
you know, she treated it likeit was dangerous, and you know,
maybe I just thought it was partof her personality, like a quirk or
something when I was growing up.But then after spending time there, I
was like, oh, everybody's likethis. It's you know, you really
put strong boundaries around your time withyour friends, around your meal time,
(19:25):
and you don't let other things upsetyou. Yeah, amazing. So I
bit the food is extremely delicious thing, Yeah, it really is. And
I always say to people that aregoing to the Amalfi Coast, I mean,
yeah, the Amalfi Coast is beautifulwhen you want to take that faery
and you know, maybe you wantto go to a fancy restaurant and positano,
but the food in Chalento was likea hundred times better and a quarter
(19:49):
of the cost. So you havelots of really fresh fish. Of course,
amazing vegetables. A lot of vegetablesthat are exported throughout the rest of
Italy are grown in Chalento. You'llsee as you drive there's just fields of
agricultural production. Everything tomatoes kiwis actuallyit was one of the very big things
that's produced in the Tolento. Thething that it is most famous for,
(20:11):
though, is buffalo mozzarella. SoI had mentioned before The buffalo have been
in the area since Roman times becausethey are naturally immune to malaria. They
used to be used to like aswork animals, and they produce milk which
has like three times the fat ofcow's milk. And actually, if you're
(20:32):
a lactose intolerant, as I am, you can eat this cheese with impunity.
So yeah, it's really it doesn'tbother the stomach of someone who's lactose
intolerant at all. It's a differentcase in a different protein. I don't
know whatever the science is. Ijust accept it and yeah, exactly,
And like you said, it's okay, great, I mean, but yeah,
(20:56):
there there's they're buffalo mozzarella production inthe Cassata area, which is closer
to Naples, but the dop fromChilento is really considered to be the very
best buffalo mozzarella in Italy and oneof the attractions that tourists might know.
Actually, the other thing it's mostfamous, second only to the temples at
(21:17):
Pestom, is one particular place calledTinuta Vanulo, and it is a farm
that is dedicated to the highest standardsof animal welfare and is incredibly particular particular
about the mozzarella. So what thatmeans is they play mozart for the buffalo.
They have massaging machines for them.They have these very very fancy milking
(21:40):
machines from Germany that allow the buffaloto milk themselves when they're ready, So
once again, no stress, andthe result is the buffalo just produced this
really exquisite milk and it's this veryvery rich cheese and vunulo. Will they
allow tourists to come in for tourof the facility and tasting and have a
lovely, lovely little restaurant, andthey're so particular about their product that they
(22:04):
won't ship it. They won't evendeliver it to a home or a restaurant
in the area. You have tocall in the morning say I'm going to
pick it up. Pick it upby you know, ten o'clock, as
it's all going to be gone.And they feel that as soon as it
leaves the property it's already degrading.You're not supposed to refrigerate it. You're
supposed to eat it as fresh aspossible. So you know, you can
(22:25):
get buffalo mozzarella that's exported around theworld, but when you try the stuff
there, it's a totally different thing. Yeah, I had this when I
was in Naples. We did afood to end were my friend and I
were tasting this buffalo mozzarella and we'regoing I think we've changed my life.
My life has changed. How guywas like, no, no, no,
no, no, no, youneed to go and try. It's
(22:48):
straight from the farm. So Iguess you might have been talking about this
particular farm. He probably was.Yeah, they opened up in nineteen eighty
eight, so they've been around fora while, but they really started to
track tourism in a big way inmaybe the past ten years. So you
know a lot of times now ifa tour group is stopping at Pestam,
(23:11):
they might make a stop at Venulofor a tasting of the mozzarella. It's
a really fun place. And youknow, it's interesting too, because there
have been here in the United Statesvarious attempts to bring Italian buffalo to California,
to Vermont, all these places thatproduce excellent dairy and try to start
buffalo mozzarella production here and it hasmostly been unsuccessful because when buffaloes are stressed,
(23:36):
they won't give milk. And eventhough they've had tell like the Buffalo
is actually like give birth and havebabies raised in California and Vermont. None
of them have been able to stillproduce enough milk to make this a viable
industry. So there's something about Chalenzojust they just want to go back Buffaloe
(23:56):
here. I want to get back, oh dear. But I just think,
isn't there something amazing that you canAnd I think this is a wonderful
thing about travel that you can't recreatethose moments and you have to go there
and you have to experience it andit might only last an hour, but
you're gonna be talking about it fora really long time probably. Yeah,
(24:19):
And Chillons was the kind of placewhere, you know, there are some
nicer hotels, especially along the beach. But if you're the kind of person,
and there's nothing wrong with this,but if you're the kind of person
who wants what you want at likethree am, stay in Rome, stay
Naples, get room service, youknow, stay at four seasons. But
if you are the kind of personwho is like open to somebody inviting you
(24:41):
into their house randomly, even thoughthey don't speak English and you don't speak
Italian, then that's then this isthe place where you want to be,
and you have people that are very, very hospitable and do things in a
very very elegant way, but ina simple way. They're not about flash,
they're not about you know, luxuryper se, and they're very what's
(25:07):
the word I'm going to say,they're very orthodox in that like, this
is the way we do it here. And so when they're sharing it with
you, it's not to say,well, we don't care about anything else,
this is the way we do ithere in staid. It's look at
how we do this. We wantto share it with you. And so,
you know, I've had the experiencebringing guests there where there were some
people that were like, I'm youknow, tired of eating vegetables. I
want to eat a steak. Well, I mean, I'm sure we could
(25:30):
find one in Shelento, but likethat's not why you come here. But
if you're really open to the experience, it's amazing. I mean, we've
had several tours where we've had peoplejust invite us into their homes and we
wind up having a glass of wineon their roof late at night, and
you know, and like nobody canspeak at the same language, but everybody
is somehow getting along and laughing.That's the kind of place it is.
(25:53):
It sounds magical. So now tellme about this mozzarella. What do you
eat it? We've just ate,but so would you have a way tamagos
the what's the way to go?Yeah? I think the caprez salad is
pretty standard when you have it atBnhulo. If you go to the restaurant
for lunch, they start you offwith a plate that's got a regular hunk
(26:15):
of mozzarella, a little ball ofit, really a smoked ball of mazzarella,
and then usually some buffalo ricotta.I'm actually a huge fan of the
icotta. It's so delicious, it'sso rich. Like I said that,
the fat content is way higher thancow's milk. They also make gelato with
it, which is really extraordinary.But yeah, they really just it's simple
(26:36):
presentations. There might be a leafof basil on there, of course a
little drizzle of olive oil, andthen from there they'll move through the dinner
or the lunch giving you usually justvegetables, the idea being that the cheese
has so much fat that that's enoughsort of fat and protein for your meal.
But you really just appreciate whatever thatone single ingredient is. I always
remember one of the first times Iwent, my cousin served me at an
(27:00):
artichoke card and it was just likethe most incredible thing. And I kept
asking him. I'm like, whatwhat is going on with this thing?
He's just looking at me like nothing, some salt, some olive oil.
It's simple. And I think that'skind of that's kind of the idea,
And you know, it's a goodarea for people that might have dietary restrictions
(27:23):
actually, because people are very sensitiveto people feeling included during your meals.
But because the food is so clean, they don't often have problems. We
had a guest on a tour lastyear who is gluten free, and it's
she doesn't have Celiac disease, butshe does get all sorts of like rash
reactions on her skinners. She hasgluten. She's actually able to eat pasta
(27:45):
and pizza just fine there because it'sall milled locally and grown in the National
Park where there's there are no pesticides. And she was fine. And then
she went back to Naples and testedit and had a pizza and she broke
out in a rash. So wow. Yeah, that really clean environment is
so healthy, naturally organic, thatbeen organic centuries. Yeah, and you
(28:08):
know, I always say, youknow, Venice has the canals, in
Rome has the coliseum, but Chilenzohas Italy's healthiest food. M it does
ye mean? And there's a probablya lot of feast day too, right
yeah. Along the coast. Anchoviesare another thing that are fairly famous.
I think Chitata on the Amalfi Coastgets a lot of fame for it,
(28:29):
but a lot of the even theChitata anchovies or the shops on the Amalfi
Coast I should say that sell anchovies, a lot of them actually come from
Chilento. There's a town called Pichotawhere the anchovie fishermen go out with these
special nets that they've been using sinceantiquity that are where the netting is actually
spaced so that it only catches anchoviesand it doesn't harm any of the other
(28:51):
fish. And in the summer youcan actually book this kind of tour where
you go out on a boat that'ssort of sailing adjacent to the fisherman and
you can watch them working with thenets, and then you go back to
the beach and then the fishermen comein a little bit later. There's sort
of a delay in between, butthen they basically do like a big fish
fry on the beach with all ofthose anchovies, and you know, all
(29:15):
these people that'd say, oh,I don't like anchovies, they've never had
them fresh like this before. Andit's so much fun. And it goes
on to like three in the morning, of course it does, and then
they sleep till three in the afterday. I love these lotstoll It's definitely
for me. Yeah. Well,they actually still get up early, but
then they have that big day napto make up for it even better.
(29:38):
Yeah, and they still do thatin this area. I mean in so
many places in Italy. You know, it's the modern world. Everybody's working
a lot. But if you goto these smaller towns between twelve and four,
you would think they were abandoned.I mean, nobody, nobody is
out. This is what it takesto leave to one hundred. I think
(30:00):
I can sign up for that.Definitely. Yeah, for our nap party
till three o'clock in the morning,eating lots of delicious beach. Do they
have eggplant there? Two? BecauseI'm I love a bit of mighty egg
plant. As our friend mutual friendKaren cools it. Oh yeah, yeah,
zucchini eggplant. I mean the summerAugust especially, Yeah, eggplant is
(30:22):
everywhere. It's very heavy on vegetablesand actually the most important thing about the
food there. This is the actualorigin point of the official Mediterranean diet.
So you know, we know thatterm, we know it sort of is
applied to I think, you know, Greek food. It's the one diet
that always comes out in scientific studies, is the one that's actually healthy and
(30:44):
not a fad diet. But itoriginates in Shellentzo. There was an American
physiologist named Ansel Keyes who is livingin a little town called Pilfi, and
he was noticing the extraordinary long lifeof all the people that were in this
town and began his official what wascalled the Five Countries Study. And his
actual methodology and science has been youknow, sort of debunked, so to
(31:10):
speak, but the tenets of whathe observed and wrote about were really accurate.
I think the reason his work wassort of turned around was that he
kind of inspired the like no fat, low fat movement, like all those
snack wells that people ate in thenineties, thinking, well, an plenty
of sugar along as it doesn't havefat. That sort of had its origins
(31:30):
somewhere in this original diet. Buthis point really was is that the fat
in the diet was coming from thingslike olive oil. But there was very
little meat in the diet of peoplein Shelento, and they really mostly ate
vegetables, and they ate a lotof bitter greens in particular, and this
being one of the sort of realfoundation points of the Mediterranean diet. So
(31:53):
people in Shelando are enormously proud thatthis all began here. And in the
town of Pioppi there is a littlemuseum of the Mediterranean diet. And there
is actually a woman who was anself keys as housekeeper in the fifties.
So she was a very young womanin the fifties. She was a very
old woman now still has a restaurantthere and she cooks the dishes that she
(32:17):
made for doctor Keys back then.Amazing, amazing. I love these stories.
It's so cool. So look,it's all these life outdoors, lifestyle,
healthy eating, but you're an aunthistorian, any more of those cultural
experiences to be had around She lenther. They just go into these little
(32:38):
towns, you know, like Capato, the town my grandmother is from,
and you know, it's a verynow it's a very humble town, but
it was a very wealthy one inthe seventeen hundreds, and so there's lots
of these old palasi and so asan art historian, it's especially fun to
go into these old homes. Wehave the privilege of somebody who had just
(32:59):
renovated at a home inviting us in, and the family member was an architects.
They had done a really beautiful joband they were showing us all of
these things that they found during yourrenovation. There had been a chapel in
the house. All of the wealthyhomes at that time had some sort of
a church or a chapel inside,and these statues of the Virgin Mary that
they had found that it just kindof like been thrown in a closet.
(33:21):
So there's there's a lot of likewhat I call feral art all around Chlento,
lots of beautiful little churches. Especiallyagain if you if you go to
these little ghost villages up in themountains, there is another big Carthusian There
was a Carthusian monastery. I believeI might be misstating which order of amongst
(33:42):
this is, but it's the largestmonastery in Europe. It's called San Lorenzo
di Padula. It's a charterhouse,and that is tremendous. And then you
know, just beyond Shelenzo, butclose by, you're in driving close driving
distance to Pompeii, to Herculaney,to the royal Palace at Caserta, and
then Salerno actually has a lot ofreally interesting medieval art. Medieval art,
(34:07):
late medieval, early renaissances my specialty. So there's a cathedral there, there's
a series called the Salerno Ivories thatare there, and a lot of these
things are not, you know,so famous to people who have a casual
interest in art history, but forthose who study Italian art, there's a
lot of stuff that you get tohave really close contact with, you know,
(34:27):
that are not that's not locked awayin a museum, that you don't
have to pay a lot of moneyto go see or wait online to see.
That you can just walk in andit's you and the art. I
love those kind of experiences you andyou feel like you may have only discovered
them yourself and you feel kind ofa bit special way when you go into
them and you just go wow,yeah. And it's interesting how you know,
(34:50):
people have a sense of proprietor prietorshiparound these works of art because they
and they are pieces of their heritage. So you know, when I went
to Villa a Pontis, for example, which is a villa that was near
the main city of Pompeii, sortof like a big wealthy person's villa that
was also destroyed during the Pompeii destructionof seventy nine eighty. And it was
(35:16):
like me and one other British couplethat were there who were personal friends with
Jeremy Corbin and gave me all sortsof gossip. It was actually pretty cool
guys who were like the museum,like the not the museum attendants, like
the attendance of the archaeological site,which was just a bunch of older men
from the town. They were tellingme about the site because there wasn't a
(35:37):
lot of signage or you know,there was no audio guide or anything,
and they were like explaining it asthough they were telling me about their grandparents.
And I think that's a really specialthing about looking at art in southern
Italy and is that it's very personalto people, Whereas you know here in
the United States, we are luckyto have some of the best works of
(35:59):
art in the world because the wealthiestpeople in the world lived here and then
then in the early nineteen hundreds,and we're collecting things from Europe at a
time when you could just sort ofbuy stuff and bring it to another country,
which you can't do now. Andthat's a good thing, but it's
so disconnected from the place, andso to see something in the place that
(36:19):
it's from and being told the storyfrom people who consider it part of their
personal ancestry as a totally different resonance. It really does. And I think
is there many people making their ownart now? Are the artisans that are
creating their own art working on there'sa lot of pottery around there. Yeah,
(36:39):
that's a little bit more on theAmalfi Coast very close by, though
Yepide, Solnadi and Raito are veryclose, like thirty minutes away from where
we stay at the at the beginningof the Chilno there are a lot of
really interesting artists that are part ofa space in Pestem called Spotsio Pestem.
So they've opened like essentially like kindof a quasi art gallery, quasi store
(37:04):
right near the archaeological site. Solike there's gift shops and a couple of
little restaurants that you can visit afterlooking at the temples, and then they
have this one gallery and they usuallywill have artists work on a different theme.
And it's not just fine artists,it's like industrial designers, Like there
was an industrial designer that designs beautifullittle ceramic buffalo, so things that are
(37:25):
symbolic of the area, that arerepresentative of the area, and then they'll
give it to people to interpret ina really contemporary way. And I mean,
I feel like everybody in Italy isan artist. I look at the
graphic design of you know, likethe map at Pestom or or like some
bottle of olive oil that you knowfrom just like a little family farm,
and the graphic design is so gorgeous. I mean you would think that some
(37:51):
very very luxury firm had created it, and you know, like no,
Pasquale's brother did it. I loveit. I love it. Just a
connection back to what's there, thefamily and the land and all of the
things around. Now, if wewere wanting to spend some time there and
we went going on one of yourtours, though, it sounds like that
(38:13):
will be a very good idea.Would you need a car to get around,
you do, And that really isthe case for most of southern Italy.
Pestim as a beach town does.There is a train that stops in
Pestim and so that's why Actually alot of people from Naples and from Rome
do take their holidays there because youcan just kind of stay there on the
beach. But that's really you know, for people that are just looking to
(38:37):
like get out of the city andgo sit on the beach. If you
really want to explore the area,you need a car. There's no traffic
in the area, so if you'renervous about driving, it's not a problem.
It does get a little tricky ifyou decide to go visit the ghost
villages, because some of those mountaintowns are really really remote. I'm not
a huge fan of driving on thosemountain roads. They're not so well paved
(38:59):
and many places, but if youstick to the coastline then it's fine.
It's it's a little windy, butit's nothing like a terrifying road along the
Amalfi coast. And again there's notraffic, so if you're confused, you
know, you can go as slowas you need to. There's no problem.
Okay. Can you pick up arental at Solanto or even Pestum?
(39:21):
Yeah, I think actually, rightin Pestum you can get them. I
think a lot of people will tendto get them in Naples because that's often
where they'll fly into or Clara.Now, yeah, I mean there's you
know, the regular hurts and allthe major rental companies are all accessible in
that area. Yeah, yeah,sure, Yeah, I have a good
experience at Naples Airport with a rentalcar company. But I'll tell you about
(39:45):
that one later. And so what'sthe best time of you to go.
It sounds like summer might be prettynice, but is the shoulder seasons also
really lovely? Yeah, I definitelyrecommend going in a or the fall,
especially the fall because it's harvest.And so you've also got the addition of
(40:05):
wine. There's a lot of beautifulChlento wine. And in a similar way
to the food, it's a lotof sort of small family farms, people
that do things in a very verytraditional way, and because the real estate
is very inexpensive in Chalento, thewine tastes way more expensive than it actually
is. I mean, so muchof wine costs what it costs because of
the real estate that it's grown on. This is why you know Napa Valley
(40:29):
or Sonoma wine in California it isso much more expensive than some French or
Italian labels. It's because the propertytaxes. So Chlento has a lot of
great stuff and the fall is thebest time because you can go visit these
vineyards and even watch the crush goingon. And of course everybody has a
tasting room that you can visit.And in the summer, you know,
(40:49):
August is the month when they're thebusiest, so that's where you're going to
get people from the rest of Italy. There's also a lot of tourists that
come from London and from Belgium inparticular, are a lot of people who
are interested in hiking and biking fromBelgium come to Shelanto and the Netherlands as
well. So it's it's fun becausethey're you know, there's beach parties going
(41:12):
on, there's the Federgoalsto celebrations,but that's not when you're going to have
sort of like the most attentive serviceand wind up getting invited into somebody's home
because everybody's busy, everybody's working,and everybody's you know, enlisting, you
know, if they're working in hospitalityin any regard, they've enlisted every member
of their family to come help.But if you go in the spring or
the fall, you really get moreof the experience of interaction with the locals.
(41:38):
Yeah, I think that full isalways my favorite time to go,
actually, I just I love thatthat feeling of harvest, and it's a
bit of celebration as well. Andthe weather is usually really good too,
so it's still warm. Yeah,they will joke. I usually see on
Facebook, usually around early October,somebody will post a meme that says,
oh, it's August the fifty third. Because it doesn't stay warm, they're
(42:02):
longer, which is good because youknow, most of the folks there are
working in hospitality in some way,so they don't really get a chance to
enjoy the summer themselves. But theycan still go to the beach well into
October, so it's an advantage forthem and to ferries go up and down
that coastline or is it more uptowards the Amalfi coast. There is now
a ferry from the city of Agropoli. When I see city, it's a
(42:28):
very small city. So yeah,you can go from Agropoli to I think
most points on the Amalfi coast.Usually when we do it, we'll go
into Salerno and then there's a ferrythat you know, stops at every single
town on the Amalfi coast and thengoes out to Capri or you can go
into Naples by boat that way.But yeah, there, and there's also
lots of because it's a fishing areatoo, there's lots of sort of private
(42:51):
boat rentals, so you can paya local fisherman. Basically what is you
know, seems to be a veryreasonable whole amount of money for a private
boat ride all along a very pristinecoastline. That's my idea of heaven.
Actually, I love I love aboat ride. My husband's actually a sailor,
(43:12):
but he doesn't he loves ocean racing. Oh wow, So it's not
fair because I say, come on, let's go ride in a boat and
you can do all the work andI can just sit on the day.
No, so we have to hiresomeone. Yeah, oh that sounds magical.
I really I like to sound ofthat. Definitely. I've got massive,
(43:32):
massive regrets now about not stopping therelonger. You mentioned that it takes
a little while to settle into thelifestyle. There's how would you recommend staying
in that area just to really reallyappreciate it the most. I think like
five days is really ideal because,yeah, you get to settle in,
you can explore some you know,get some beach time in. My favorite
(43:57):
beach is a town called Santa Mariacastell Abate. Castellibate, the medieval village
which is just above the beaches onthat list of Italy's most beautiful villages that
it really is a special place.And then the beach town is absolutely gorgeous.
So yeah, you want some timefor the beach, you want some
time to go to Pestom, youwant time to go explore the mountains.
(44:20):
There's an amazing zip line in thearea, which I highly highly recommend.
And what's you know great about Chilentois that you are close to major cities,
so you know, for people whoare traveling and wanting to make the
most of their visit. You know, you can fly in a Rome and
you know, do the coliseum andthe Sistine Chapel and all of that,
(44:43):
and then take the train or flydown in Naples and then have this really
wonderful sort of off the beaten pathauthentic experience with all the great food and
the wine. So, you know, other parts of Italy, even though
they're beautiful, a Calabria or evengoing to Sicily, you know, might
require more time, but Chilenzo wasreally close. And even if you want
to drive from Rome, we're fromNaples, it's like from Rome it's about
(45:06):
three hours. So it's good andthat it allows you to do both like
the touristy stuff that you want todo because you're in Italy, and then
also put in the off the beatenpath part. Yeah, I really love
this combination idea. I think thatit's going to become more and more popular
as well when we can travel again, which hopefully that's very soon. But
(45:27):
yes, I think definitely being ableto access these beautiful, slower pace of
life as well as those top sitesthat people want to see, I think
combining those two is an excellent ideathat I will certainly be taking more advantage
of actually myself and fielding that intomy plans. Yeah, I think everybody
is discovering, you know, morenatural tourism right now. I mean,
(45:51):
I know here in New York we'revery restricted in everything right now. Our
restaurants aren't even yet open for indoordining, and so if you will have
been going swimming, they've been goingup to the mountains in the Hudson Valley.
They've been going to the beaches ofLong Island in New Jersey, much
more so than ever before. AndI think that's a travel trend that will
continue. You know, even aspeople are able to travel in Europe again,
(46:13):
I think they're still going to feelmuch more comfortable being in a place
with lots of space, even ina hotel. You know, there's lots
of these agri touris mal properties inLento where even if there's other guests there,
they're you know, you're very wellspaced and where you're not going to
be worried about being in crowded situations. I mean, I'm sure people will
crowd into the Sistine Chapel again,I have no doubt that will happen.
(46:36):
But I don't know that anybody's goingto want to do that in the next
two or three years. Yeah,possibly not. Possibly not. Now I
have one last question for you,Danielle, about the Lento Coast, and
that is, what is the oneplace where you go to and you haven't
been there for a while now,and then one place that you'll go back
to that you'll know you're back andit's very special to you. That's just
(46:59):
going into the town of Capacho andyou know, being my grandmother was there
and this town was my storybook.It's like my heart. And as soon
as I arrive there, I mean, I just have such a feeling of,
you know, home, And it'sfunny because I know I'm not from
there, and yet I'm in thetown historian who's always sitting in the piazza,
(47:20):
like I can rely on him tobe there. And as soon as
I pull up into town or Iwalk into down usually ah child, then
yeah, I may it, comesit down, let me offer you a
coffee. And it's just like I'vealways been there. Oh it does sound
really love, really wonderful plays andone that we all hope to get to
(47:44):
very very soon. Now. Ido have huge regrets, huge regrets about
not spending more time there and wesort of just sipped through. But Daniel,
how can our listeners stay in touchwith you and learn more about the
Chilano Coast and that amazing food andbuffalo mozzarella site is feast Onhistory dot com
and we have moved all of ourprogramming online this year. So we have
(48:07):
wine classes, we have cooking classesthat are filmed in Italy, and we
have my art history tours brought online. And I'm actually bringing in some of
the guides that I work with Inclentoto be online with us and to share
what we're doing with the world.So you know, this is something that
we adapted too because of COVID,but it really it made us realize that
(48:27):
we could actually share this with peoplefrom all over the world because you know,
I'll cost a tiny amount compared toactual travel. And so yeah,
the Feast on History, Food andWine school online is the way you can
engage with all of this stuff nowand then hopefully we can all travel again
soon and we can help you withthat as well. Wonderful, that's so
exciting. I can't wait to havea look at and knows you around that
(48:51):
it's something you know as I've recordedthese podcasts over the last few months,
just even just talking about Italy andall the places you can go, it
does actually bring me a big senseof calm. So I think trying these
online experiences can just transport you toanother place, just even for a moment,
until we can all get back onthe road and travel again. So
(49:13):
go out to see Daniel. Thankyou for joining us. I really feel
like I can smell those Tyrannian seabreezes and I've almost had a little vocation
on the coast myself. Thank youfor having me. I really appreciate it.
Oh my goodness. Now those itineryideas I've been working on have another
destination to deal with. Hello,Chilento Coast. I absolutely must check out
(49:35):
those buffalo My mind is boggling thatthe cheese can taste even better than the
one I trade in Naples. Nowyou can easily get directly to Silano,
which is at the end of theAmoufi coast and the start of the Chilento
Coast, from Rome in about twohours by train. This is actually way
easier in some respects than going toPositano or even Sorrento, because you do
(49:57):
have to do a transfer or twoin those cases. So the Cilento Coast
makes a great option if you wantto escape the Amalfi Coast crowds, or
you're looking for a more budget friendlydestination with similar scenery and experiences. And
I even heard that you can seeCapri listening in the distance from the property
where Danielle's cooking classes take place.Make sure to drop by Danielle's website feast
(50:20):
on History for all the details ofthat experience, plus their online food and
wine school. All the details areany episode show notes at Untold Italy dot
com, forward Slash thirty eight,or you can also reach them via your
podcast app. Now that's all forthis week, Gratzia, thanks so much
for listening, and I hope youenjoyed this episode. If you did find
it useful, we would be sograteful if you could share our podcast or
(50:43):
leave a rating or review. Thishelps us reach more people and help them
plan their own memorable trips to Italy. Garratzia, and now I'm going to
close off and dream about Buffalo mozzarella. Honestly, it can be life changing.
Chow for now. The Until Italypodcast is an independent production podcast editing
audio production and website development by MarkHatter, Production assistance and content writing by
(51:08):
the other kt Clark. Yes thereare two of us. For more information
about untold Italy, please visit untoldItaly dot com
This is the Untold Italy Travel podcastand you're listening to episode number one hundred
and ninety two. Tatuti and benVenuti to one Told Italy, the travel
podcast to where you go to thetownsend villages, mountains, the lakes,
(00:21):
hills and coast lines of Bella,Italia. Each week, your host Katie
Clark takes you on a journey ina search of magical landscapes, history,
culture, wine, zelato, andof course a whole lot of pasta.
If you're dreaming of Italy and planningfuture adventures there, you've come to the
right place. Ben Venutti Chow friends, I'm so excited to share another favorite
(00:56):
episode with you today, and it'sthe one that sparked the Italian adventure that
I'm currently on, staying on thestunning Chilento Coast in southern Italy. In
this episode, I chat with myfriend DANIELLEA Terry, who I will have
met in person for the very firsttime just a few short days before this
recording airs, and I'm so excited. The Chilento Coast is not far from
(01:19):
the Amalfi Coast and it's here whereyou'll find the Italian coastline of your dreams
without the crowds, not to mentionthe famous, the very famous, life
changing buffalo mozzarella cheese. So here'sone of my favorite episodes of all time,
and I hope inspires you to visitthere too. Cha Danielle ben Venuti
(01:40):
and welcome to the Untold Italy podcast. Hey Katie, thanks for having me.
Oh, it's so exciting to haveyou here. Now, Danielle,
before I go ahead and ask youall the many many questions I have about
the Chilento coast, could you pleaselet our listeners know something about yourself and
your background. Well, I'm anartist storian by training. I live in
(02:00):
New York City and I'm the founderof feast On History tours in the Chilento
region, and my background is inthat region. My grandmother came from the
town of Capacho, where our toursare based, and I grew up hearing
her stories my entire life about thislittle town. And so when I actually
got to go the first time,I think I was about nineteen or twenty
(02:23):
years old, it was really likewalking around in a storybook. And now
many many years later, it stillfeels that way to me. It's those
family connections are always so strong,aren't they often in Italy and it's a
really amazing way to connect yourself tothe country. But where exactly is the
Chillento Coast. It's an area ofItaly that even some Italians may not be
(02:47):
familiar with, though they might befamiliar with some of the landmarks that are
there. So Chillento is in theregion of Campania. So if you're saying
Lento in Campania, it's kind oflike you're referring to the Hudson Valley in
New York State, for example.And it's just a little bit south of
the Amalfi Coast as about an hourand a half from Naples if you're driving,
(03:09):
So if you are going to Chlento, that's probably where you're going to
fly in, about thirty minutes southof Salerno, and it encompasses both the
coastline and the interior mountains as well, where there's some very very beautiful and
remote, difficult to reach villages.Amazing. So you said it's really close
(03:30):
to the Maufie coast. Does thatmean it's got a spectacular coastline too,
It really does, but it's donenearly as built up. So from the
place where we are based. Mycousins in Italy have a hotel there and
that's where our tours are based.So if you're standing at the hotel,
you're facing the Trhanian Sea. Ifyou look to your right, you see
(03:53):
the Amalfi Coast and the Gulf ofSalerno, and then if you look to
your left, it's the Chlento coast. So probably all like the same coastline,
except that the Chalento Coast is notnearly as built up, and there's
also no cruise ships. It's anational park, so it's a much more
natural, much more pristine coastline.The water is a lot cleaner, the
(04:15):
beaches are a lot cleaner. There'snot you know, splashy hotels and yachts
pulling up and celebrities everywhere, butthat's also part of its charm. Yeah,
it does sound amazing, and Iunderstand that coastline was used as a
setting for the Wonder Woman movie.It was well, my husband and I
were actually watching that movie and I'mstaring at the scene where they're sort of
(04:41):
surrounded by all those giant rocks,and I went, wait a minute.
I pulled up my phone and Iimmediately began googling I'm like, I don't
know where it is. Yeah,well, I think if it's good enough
the Diana princes, and it's probablygood enough for us. Absolutely. Yeah,
it's it's kind of an undiscovered gem. I think a lot of Italians
(05:03):
have actually been really discovering it thisyear because they've been doing most of their
traveling inside of Italy for their summerholidays. So I was just speaking with
my cousin yesterday and she said thatthey were filled with Italians all of August,
which is not normally the case.So I think other Italians as well
are discovering this little piece of paradise. Oh, it does sound amazing.
(05:27):
And you mentioned that those mountains aswell, what mountain ranges are they?
It's all part of the Lento NationalPark. Well a little bit on the
other side you have the Apennines,the very beginning of them that they It's
also part of an area of Italycalled the Valdi Diano. It sort of
goes into the interior, very ruggedregion of Basilicata. So on the sort
(05:51):
of northeast side of Lento, theinland side of it borders it turns into
Basilicata, so similar terrain to Matteafor example, and it's an area that
you know, it's pretty poor.There aren't that many young people there anymore
because there are just so few jobs. But it's really spectacular for people who
(06:14):
are interested in hiking and mountain biking. That's a very big thing in that
area. It's filled with these littlewhat they called ghost villages, these places
that were thriving little villages and reallykind of emptied out when emigration from Italy
in the twenties and the thirties reallyaccelerated. And so when you go to
(06:35):
some of these little small towns andyou tell them that you're from the United
States, they'll, you know,some old lady will say, ah,
do you know the last name Rosariobecause my cousin left in nineteen thirty five,
And then she'll name some very specifictown in the New York area,
and yeah, you actually know exactlywhat she's talking about. Oh, I
(06:58):
love ice connections, fantasti and soyou've got all these natural beauty around.
So I guess that's what the mainthings that to do in this area.
But I understand is also a lotof history too. The biggest site to
see there are the temples at Pestum, so southern Italy was all part of
Greece. It was a Greek colony, the Mania grecas what it's called by
(07:20):
historians, and so there was acity founded they are called Postidonia in the
sixth century BC, so Postidonia beingthe city of Poseidon, and starting in
the sixth century BC, there werea series of four temples. Three of
them are still standing. One ofthem was completely destroyed and sunk into the
(07:42):
marsh, though lots of fragments fromit have been found. So these are
the three most intact Greek temples inthe world. They're not in Greece,
they're in Italy, but of coursethis was Greece and they sort of an
unlikely survival. So it was aGreek city that became a Lukanyan city.
(08:03):
Lukanyans were this sort of tribe ofpeople from central Italy. Then it became
a Roman city and the entire sitewhere all the temples stood became also residential.
The Romans built their homes right onthe temple complex, and then eventually
in the early Middle Ages, thesite became abandoned because there were pirates from
(08:28):
North Africa who were raiding the coast, and also the area was very malarial.
It was very marshy and swampy,and after the people that lived on
the temples moved up the hill tothe town of Capacho, it really sort
of just sunk into the marsh andwas sort of protected by neglect. And
(08:50):
there was a lot of buffalo thatwere actually grazed there. Buffalo or naturally
immune to malaria. They were actuallybrought to Italy by the Romans, and
so the locals kind of always knewabout custom and there were people that were
doing some sort of farming and agriculturein that region, but in that area,
but it really wasn't habitable, andit was in the seventeen hundreds when
(09:13):
they were kind of really rediscovered.The Bourbons sort of brought people from the
Grand Tour down there, writers likeGurtha for example. There were a lot
of engravings done of them at thattime. But oddly enough, they really
came back to life when Mussolini drainedthe swamp literally curatively. Yeah, they
(09:37):
began a huge project to drain thesewaters and the temples were revealed again,
and you know, intermittently there's beenarchaeological work done there, but they really
are the glory of this region.Today. So a lot of people,
if they're on the Amalfi coast,will frequently do a day trip to past
them. And if there's you know, there are a lot of people that
(09:58):
will say, I've never heard ofSalento. Oh, but I've been to
pest them, not realizing that thatis sort of the first town that you
will reach when you come to thearea called Salento. And I believe you
can actually walk among the temples reallyand get really really close. Yeah,
you've always been able to walk allover the temple complex, and you know,
(10:18):
it's pretty amazing. You have mosaicpieces right underneath your feet. You
walk around in the basin of theold swimming pool, you can see the
little holes in the ground which werethe cisterns and the bathrooms of the room
and homes. But about I'm goingto see two or three years ago now,
Yeah, they have a new museumdirector who has done a lot of
(10:41):
really wonderful things about making the siteaccessible, including making a wheelchair accessible.
But he did open up two ofthe temples two people actually walking on them
and it is a thrilling experience,it really is, because, of course
they're so massive and you get tostand very close to them normally, but
there's something about walking on them andbeing inside that just is overwhelming. That
(11:05):
they're just tremendous, tremendous pieces ofarchitecture, and to think about how old
they are is almost incomprehensible. Yeah, amazing. I think that two and
a half thousand years old, aren'tthey? Yeah, one of them is
about three thousand years old. Ohwow. Yeah, I mean I've been
to the site at Tagigento and thatwas amazing, but you can't actually walk
(11:28):
inside the temple, so this mustbe just just giving me shivers thinking about
it. Actually, And they're farlarger than the ones that I give be
Gento too. Wow, they're prettybig. Yeah, no, these are
and those these dwarf those I wentlast summer. I went to Geno right
after being at Pestom and I waslike, oh, these are tiny.
(11:48):
It sounds ridiculous, but yeah,it's true. That's incredible. On now
I've got big, big regrets aboutnot stopping there, but I believe there's
some amazing mosaics in there as well. Is there's one that I was reading
about about the Tomb of the Diver, which is yeah, the Tomb of
(12:09):
the Diver is one of the Lukanyantombs. So the Lucanians are really,
I think, kind of an understudiedgroup of people. And I realized my
own roots coming from this area.When I looked at these tombs and there's
these very realistic portraits of people,I'm like, oh, these guys are
my ancestors. So there was awhole series of tombs, a whole necropolis
(12:33):
that was excavated in the nineteen sixtiesand this is the area where the Lukanyans,
the wealthy lu Kanyans, had theirtombs. And so imagine a person
being buried in the ground, butthen being surrounded by four slabs, so
like a coffin that's much larger thanthe body itself, and then each of
the four slabs painted with different scenes, some depicting passage to the underworld.
(12:58):
There's some there's one in particular that'sso beautiful where you see sort of an
elder greeting the person who has justdied and sort of clasping their hands.
And the faces are they look likeItalians that you see walking around the streets
of anywhere in Kobania today. It'stremendous and the two of the Diver is
one of those, and it's animage of a young man diving, except
(13:20):
that he's not diving into a bodyof water. He's sort of diving into
the great unknown. And these tombsare all excavated in the sixties. There's
actually a lot of theft that happenedat that time. There are some of
these tombs which are in major museumsaround the world which I will not name
at the moment, that probably shouldgive them back, but the museum at
(13:46):
past Him has not been able tointegrate them into their regular display. I
believe that's something that they're planning on. They have them all in storage vaults,
but during the summer months and duringcertain other times a year when there's
a lot more tourism, they willactually open up the vaults for appointments and
you can go down there and seethem, and they are really amazing and
(14:09):
I can't wait till they're eventually onmore public display because they're so vivid.
You really get a sense of life. This is in the third century BC.
It just blows my mind that thathas such longevity when we were leaving
such a much more can I say, like consumer disposable culture and you just
(14:31):
wind up from our life. What'sgoing to be left, you know,
things of life, so many thingsthat they're gonna have to sort through and
be like, what was up withthese water bottles? I hope they don't
last that long. That'll be trade. Yeah, I don't know. They
might a lot of Starbucks cups,oh deah. But I think you know,
(14:56):
the whole attitude to longevity and longlife and just taking a slower pace.
It's it's really part of the culturethere, isn't it. Yeah,
Chileans it was actually known for veryvery old people, people who lived to
a very steamed age and are notjust old but are healthy. And you've
(15:18):
really see this when you move alongthe coast. So from Pestum, Capacho
is the town in the mountains.Pestum is the town on the coast.
It's actually like a combined township,and that's kind of your entry into the
Cilento. And then as you godeeper it gets more rural, it gets
more traditional. And then so movingalong the coast, you go to a
(15:39):
Gropuli, which is a much moremodern town where you're going to go shopping
and you know, go out fora good dinner. There's a Nichelin starred
restaurant there, and then you justkeep going Caste Labate, pop down to
Polynuro, and you get to theselittle, tiny fishing villages that are just
(16:00):
most untouched by the modern world.And whenever you drive into one of these
towns, and you know a lotof people go there in the summer to
go to the beach, you'll seealways a group of older people sitting in
the piazza. Very rarely, youknow, very often they don't even have
teeth, maybe because they grew upin an age when they didn't have a
lot of things like dental care whenthey were children. But you see some
(16:23):
lady who looks like she's in hereighties get up and climb up a hill
with so much more agility than Ihave, and you see that there are
these social connections. You know,people that eat diets that are just pretty
much vegetables, olive oil and fish, that just have a very very natural,
easy, stress free lifestyle. Sothere's sort of a joke in Chlento
(16:44):
they say the password to life inthe Lento is piano piano, which means
slowly, slowly, And it's true. People seem like allergic to stress I
mean, when I show up Ilive in Manhattan, it takes me a
wild calm down, especially because I'musually coming through from Naples and Naples is
a crazy city like New York is, so it always takes me a few
(17:07):
days to sort of drop my energydown to the local rhythm. And when
I do, I'm like, oh, this is how you live to be
a ripe old age, not theway I'm doing it normally. But you
know, if you show up inyour sort of frenetic and full of energy,
they will just look at you ina way that is it's not condescending,
but it's kind of like calm down, and you do, and it
(17:30):
works, and you know, it'ssort of soothing, and it's a very
very unique life. I think,you know, even again, Northern Italians
will come and see this as acuriosity because life in Milan or Bologna is
also very busy in frenetic and therehave been researchers working in Chalentzo specifically in
two seventeen, I believe a groupof researchers from Sweden who had conducted a
(17:56):
long study where they actually swapped outa group of Swede with a group of
people from lento and put them inthe opposite places to see if this had
an effect on their health. Theyalso have been studying a particular kind of
rosemary that grows wild there that peopleput on a lot of their food,
and they suspect that there's something inthe oil of this rosemary that might have
(18:18):
something to do with longevity. Butreally they also think there's something in their
gut biome that is much better offat warding, that's much better at warding
off disease. There's a lot ofscientific stuff which I've read, and you
know, I'm not a scientist.I don't fully understand it, but having
spent enough time there, I'm goingto say it's because these people just reject
(18:40):
stress in all of its form,and staying calm is such a virtue to
them. Yeah. I mean,I can sign up to sitting in the
piazza in the sun for you know, weeks even. It sounds amazing to
me right now. Yeah, Andyou know it makes sense because my grandmother
was like that. She was shereally saw stress, like especially stress around
(19:02):
a time of eating, to justbe like, you can't do that,
you know, she treated it likeit was dangerous, and you know,
maybe I just thought it was partof her personality, like a quirk or
something when I was growing up.But then after spending time there, I
was like, oh, everybody's likethis. It's you know, you really
put strong boundaries around your time withyour friends, around your meal time,
(19:25):
and you don't let other things upsetyou. Yeah, amazing. So I
bit the food is extremely delicious thing, Yeah, it really is. And
I always say to people that aregoing to the Amalfi Coast, I mean,
yeah, the Amalfi Coast is beautifulwhen you want to take that faery
and you know, maybe you wantto go to a fancy restaurant and positano,
but the food in Chalento was likea hundred times better and a quarter
(19:49):
of the cost. So you havelots of really fresh fish. Of course,
amazing vegetables. A lot of vegetablesthat are exported throughout the rest of
Italy are grown in Chalento. You'llsee as you drive there's just fields of
agricultural production. Everything tomatoes kiwis actuallyit was one of the very big things
that's produced in the Tolento. Thething that it is most famous for,
(20:11):
though, is buffalo mozzarella. SoI had mentioned before The buffalo have been
in the area since Roman times becausethey are naturally immune to malaria. They
used to be used to like aswork animals, and they produce milk which
has like three times the fat ofcow's milk. And actually, if you're
(20:32):
a lactose intolerant, as I am, you can eat this cheese with impunity.
So yeah, it's really it doesn'tbother the stomach of someone who's lactose
intolerant at all. It's a differentcase in a different protein. I don't
know whatever the science is. Ijust accept it and yeah, exactly,
And like you said, it's okay, great, I mean, but yeah,
(20:56):
there there's they're buffalo mozzarella production inthe Cassata area, which is closer
to Naples, but the dop fromChilento is really considered to be the very
best buffalo mozzarella in Italy and oneof the attractions that tourists might know.
Actually, the other thing it's mostfamous, second only to the temples at
(21:17):
Pestom, is one particular place calledTinuta Vanulo, and it is a farm
that is dedicated to the highest standardsof animal welfare and is incredibly particular particular
about the mozzarella. So what thatmeans is they play mozart for the buffalo.
They have massaging machines for them.They have these very very fancy milking
(21:40):
machines from Germany that allow the buffaloto milk themselves when they're ready, So
once again, no stress, andthe result is the buffalo just produced this
really exquisite milk and it's this veryvery rich cheese and vunulo. Will they
allow tourists to come in for tourof the facility and tasting and have a
lovely, lovely little restaurant, andthey're so particular about their product that they
(22:04):
won't ship it. They won't evendeliver it to a home or a restaurant
in the area. You have tocall in the morning say I'm going to
pick it up. Pick it upby you know, ten o'clock, as
it's all going to be gone.And they feel that as soon as it
leaves the property it's already degrading.You're not supposed to refrigerate it. You're
supposed to eat it as fresh aspossible. So you know, you can
(22:25):
get buffalo mozzarella that's exported around theworld, but when you try the stuff
there, it's a totally different thing. Yeah, I had this when I
was in Naples. We did afood to end were my friend and I
were tasting this buffalo mozzarella and we'regoing I think we've changed my life.
My life has changed. How guywas like, no, no, no,
no, no, no, youneed to go and try. It's
(22:48):
straight from the farm. So Iguess you might have been talking about this
particular farm. He probably was.Yeah, they opened up in nineteen eighty
eight, so they've been around fora while, but they really started to
track tourism in a big way inmaybe the past ten years. So you
know a lot of times now ifa tour group is stopping at Pestam,
(23:11):
they might make a stop at Venulofor a tasting of the mozzarella. It's
a really fun place. And youknow, it's interesting too, because there
have been here in the United Statesvarious attempts to bring Italian buffalo to California,
to Vermont, all these places thatproduce excellent dairy and try to start
buffalo mozzarella production here and it hasmostly been unsuccessful because when buffaloes are stressed,
(23:36):
they won't give milk. And eventhough they've had tell like the Buffalo
is actually like give birth and havebabies raised in California and Vermont. None
of them have been able to stillproduce enough milk to make this a viable
industry. So there's something about Chalenzojust they just want to go back Buffaloe
(23:56):
here. I want to get back, oh dear. But I just think,
isn't there something amazing that you canAnd I think this is a wonderful
thing about travel that you can't recreatethose moments and you have to go there
and you have to experience it andit might only last an hour, but
you're gonna be talking about it fora really long time probably. Yeah,
(24:19):
And Chillons was the kind of placewhere, you know, there are some
nicer hotels, especially along the beach. But if you're the kind of person,
and there's nothing wrong with this,but if you're the kind of person
who wants what you want at likethree am, stay in Rome, stay
Naples, get room service, youknow, stay at four seasons. But
if you are the kind of personwho is like open to somebody inviting you
(24:41):
into their house randomly, even thoughthey don't speak English and you don't speak
Italian, then that's then this isthe place where you want to be,
and you have people that are very, very hospitable and do things in a
very very elegant way, but ina simple way. They're not about flash,
they're not about you know, luxuryper se, and they're very what's
(25:07):
the word I'm going to say,they're very orthodox in that like, this
is the way we do it here. And so when they're sharing it with
you, it's not to say,well, we don't care about anything else,
this is the way we do ithere in staid. It's look at
how we do this. We wantto share it with you. And so,
you know, I've had the experiencebringing guests there where there were some
people that were like, I'm youknow, tired of eating vegetables. I
want to eat a steak. Well, I mean, I'm sure we could
(25:30):
find one in Shelento, but likethat's not why you come here. But
if you're really open to the experience, it's amazing. I mean, we've
had several tours where we've had peoplejust invite us into their homes and we
wind up having a glass of wineon their roof late at night, and
you know, and like nobody canspeak at the same language, but everybody
is somehow getting along and laughing.That's the kind of place it is.
(25:53):
It sounds magical. So now tellme about this mozzarella. What do you
eat it? We've just ate,but so would you have a way tamagos
the what's the way to go?Yeah? I think the caprez salad is
pretty standard when you have it atBnhulo. If you go to the restaurant
for lunch, they start you offwith a plate that's got a regular hunk
(26:15):
of mozzarella, a little ball ofit, really a smoked ball of mazzarella,
and then usually some buffalo ricotta.I'm actually a huge fan of the
icotta. It's so delicious, it'sso rich. Like I said that,
the fat content is way higher thancow's milk. They also make gelato with
it, which is really extraordinary.But yeah, they really just it's simple
(26:36):
presentations. There might be a leafof basil on there, of course a
little drizzle of olive oil, andthen from there they'll move through the dinner
or the lunch giving you usually justvegetables, the idea being that the cheese
has so much fat that that's enoughsort of fat and protein for your meal.
But you really just appreciate whatever thatone single ingredient is. I always
remember one of the first times Iwent, my cousin served me at an
(27:00):
artichoke card and it was just likethe most incredible thing. And I kept
asking him. I'm like, whatwhat is going on with this thing?
He's just looking at me like nothing, some salt, some olive oil.
It's simple. And I think that'skind of that's kind of the idea,
And you know, it's a goodarea for people that might have dietary restrictions
(27:23):
actually, because people are very sensitiveto people feeling included during your meals.
But because the food is so clean, they don't often have problems. We
had a guest on a tour lastyear who is gluten free, and it's
she doesn't have Celiac disease, butshe does get all sorts of like rash
reactions on her skinners. She hasgluten. She's actually able to eat pasta
(27:45):
and pizza just fine there because it'sall milled locally and grown in the National
Park where there's there are no pesticides. And she was fine. And then
she went back to Naples and testedit and had a pizza and she broke
out in a rash. So wow. Yeah, that really clean environment is
so healthy, naturally organic, thatbeen organic centuries. Yeah, and you
(28:08):
know, I always say, youknow, Venice has the canals, in
Rome has the coliseum, but Chilenzohas Italy's healthiest food. M it does
ye mean? And there's a probablya lot of feast day too, right
yeah. Along the coast. Anchoviesare another thing that are fairly famous.
I think Chitata on the Amalfi Coastgets a lot of fame for it,
(28:29):
but a lot of the even theChitata anchovies or the shops on the Amalfi
Coast I should say that sell anchovies, a lot of them actually come from
Chilento. There's a town called Pichotawhere the anchovie fishermen go out with these
special nets that they've been using sinceantiquity that are where the netting is actually
spaced so that it only catches anchoviesand it doesn't harm any of the other
(28:51):
fish. And in the summer youcan actually book this kind of tour where
you go out on a boat that'ssort of sailing adjacent to the fisherman and
you can watch them working with thenets, and then you go back to
the beach and then the fishermen comein a little bit later. There's sort
of a delay in between, butthen they basically do like a big fish
fry on the beach with all ofthose anchovies, and you know, all
(29:15):
these people that'd say, oh,I don't like anchovies, they've never had
them fresh like this before. Andit's so much fun. And it goes
on to like three in the morning, of course it does, and then
they sleep till three in the afterday. I love these lotstoll It's definitely
for me. Yeah. Well,they actually still get up early, but
then they have that big day napto make up for it even better.
(29:38):
Yeah, and they still do thatin this area. I mean in so
many places in Italy. You know, it's the modern world. Everybody's working
a lot. But if you goto these smaller towns between twelve and four,
you would think they were abandoned.I mean, nobody, nobody is
out. This is what it takesto leave to one hundred. I think
(30:00):
I can sign up for that.Definitely. Yeah, for our nap party
till three o'clock in the morning,eating lots of delicious beach. Do they
have eggplant there? Two? BecauseI'm I love a bit of mighty egg
plant. As our friend mutual friendKaren cools it. Oh yeah, yeah,
zucchini eggplant. I mean the summerAugust especially, Yeah, eggplant is
(30:22):
everywhere. It's very heavy on vegetablesand actually the most important thing about the
food there. This is the actualorigin point of the official Mediterranean diet.
So you know, we know thatterm, we know it sort of is
applied to I think, you know, Greek food. It's the one diet
that always comes out in scientific studies, is the one that's actually healthy and
(30:44):
not a fad diet. But itoriginates in Shellentzo. There was an American
physiologist named Ansel Keyes who is livingin a little town called Pilfi, and
he was noticing the extraordinary long lifeof all the people that were in this
town and began his official what wascalled the Five Countries Study. And his
actual methodology and science has been youknow, sort of debunked, so to
(31:10):
speak, but the tenets of whathe observed and wrote about were really accurate.
I think the reason his work wassort of turned around was that he
kind of inspired the like no fat, low fat movement, like all those
snack wells that people ate in thenineties, thinking, well, an plenty
of sugar along as it doesn't havefat. That sort of had its origins
(31:30):
somewhere in this original diet. Buthis point really was is that the fat
in the diet was coming from thingslike olive oil. But there was very
little meat in the diet of peoplein Shelento, and they really mostly ate
vegetables, and they ate a lotof bitter greens in particular, and this
being one of the sort of realfoundation points of the Mediterranean diet. So
(31:53):
people in Shelando are enormously proud thatthis all began here. And in the
town of Pioppi there is a littlemuseum of the Mediterranean diet. And there
is actually a woman who was anself keys as housekeeper in the fifties.
So she was a very young womanin the fifties. She was a very
old woman now still has a restaurantthere and she cooks the dishes that she
(32:17):
made for doctor Keys back then.Amazing, amazing. I love these stories.
It's so cool. So look,it's all these life outdoors, lifestyle,
healthy eating, but you're an aunthistorian, any more of those cultural
experiences to be had around She lenther. They just go into these little
(32:38):
towns, you know, like Capato, the town my grandmother is from,
and you know, it's a verynow it's a very humble town, but
it was a very wealthy one inthe seventeen hundreds, and so there's lots
of these old palasi and so asan art historian, it's especially fun to
go into these old homes. Wehave the privilege of somebody who had just
(32:59):
renovated at a home inviting us in, and the family member was an architects.
They had done a really beautiful joband they were showing us all of
these things that they found during yourrenovation. There had been a chapel in
the house. All of the wealthyhomes at that time had some sort of
a church or a chapel inside,and these statues of the Virgin Mary that
they had found that it just kindof like been thrown in a closet.
(33:21):
So there's there's a lot of likewhat I call feral art all around Chlento,
lots of beautiful little churches. Especiallyagain if you if you go to
these little ghost villages up in themountains, there is another big Carthusian There
was a Carthusian monastery. I believeI might be misstating which order of amongst
(33:42):
this is, but it's the largestmonastery in Europe. It's called San Lorenzo
di Padula. It's a charterhouse,and that is tremendous. And then you
know, just beyond Shelenzo, butclose by, you're in driving close driving
distance to Pompeii, to Herculaney,to the royal Palace at Caserta, and
then Salerno actually has a lot ofreally interesting medieval art. Medieval art,
(34:07):
late medieval, early renaissances my specialty. So there's a cathedral there, there's
a series called the Salerno Ivories thatare there, and a lot of these
things are not, you know,so famous to people who have a casual
interest in art history, but forthose who study Italian art, there's a
lot of stuff that you get tohave really close contact with, you know,
(34:27):
that are not that's not locked awayin a museum, that you don't
have to pay a lot of moneyto go see or wait online to see.
That you can just walk in andit's you and the art. I
love those kind of experiences you andyou feel like you may have only discovered
them yourself and you feel kind ofa bit special way when you go into
them and you just go wow,yeah. And it's interesting how you know,
(34:50):
people have a sense of proprietor prietorshiparound these works of art because they
and they are pieces of their heritage. So you know, when I went
to Villa a Pontis, for example, which is a villa that was near
the main city of Pompeii, sortof like a big wealthy person's villa that
was also destroyed during the Pompeii destructionof seventy nine eighty. And it was
(35:16):
like me and one other British couplethat were there who were personal friends with
Jeremy Corbin and gave me all sortsof gossip. It was actually pretty cool
guys who were like the museum,like the not the museum attendants, like
the attendance of the archaeological site,which was just a bunch of older men
from the town. They were tellingme about the site because there wasn't a
(35:37):
lot of signage or you know,there was no audio guide or anything,
and they were like explaining it asthough they were telling me about their grandparents.
And I think that's a really specialthing about looking at art in southern
Italy and is that it's very personalto people, Whereas you know here in
the United States, we are luckyto have some of the best works of
(35:59):
art in the world because the wealthiestpeople in the world lived here and then
then in the early nineteen hundreds,and we're collecting things from Europe at a
time when you could just sort ofbuy stuff and bring it to another country,
which you can't do now. Andthat's a good thing, but it's
so disconnected from the place, andso to see something in the place that
(36:19):
it's from and being told the storyfrom people who consider it part of their
personal ancestry as a totally different resonance. It really does. And I think
is there many people making their ownart now? Are the artisans that are
creating their own art working on there'sa lot of pottery around there. Yeah,
(36:39):
that's a little bit more on theAmalfi Coast very close by, though
Yepide, Solnadi and Raito are veryclose, like thirty minutes away from where
we stay at the at the beginningof the Chilno there are a lot of
really interesting artists that are part ofa space in Pestem called Spotsio Pestem.
So they've opened like essentially like kindof a quasi art gallery, quasi store
(37:04):
right near the archaeological site. Solike there's gift shops and a couple of
little restaurants that you can visit afterlooking at the temples, and then they
have this one gallery and they usuallywill have artists work on a different theme.
And it's not just fine artists,it's like industrial designers, Like there
was an industrial designer that designs beautifullittle ceramic buffalo, so things that are
(37:25):
symbolic of the area, that arerepresentative of the area, and then they'll
give it to people to interpret ina really contemporary way. And I mean,
I feel like everybody in Italy isan artist. I look at the
graphic design of you know, likethe map at Pestom or or like some
bottle of olive oil that you knowfrom just like a little family farm,
and the graphic design is so gorgeous. I mean you would think that some
(37:51):
very very luxury firm had created it, and you know, like no,
Pasquale's brother did it. I loveit. I love it. Just a
connection back to what's there, thefamily and the land and all of the
things around. Now, if wewere wanting to spend some time there and
we went going on one of yourtours, though, it sounds like that
(38:13):
will be a very good idea.Would you need a car to get around,
you do, And that really isthe case for most of southern Italy.
Pestim as a beach town does.There is a train that stops in
Pestim and so that's why Actually alot of people from Naples and from Rome
do take their holidays there because youcan just kind of stay there on the
beach. But that's really you know, for people that are just looking to
(38:37):
like get out of the city andgo sit on the beach. If you
really want to explore the area,you need a car. There's no traffic
in the area, so if you'renervous about driving, it's not a problem.
It does get a little tricky ifyou decide to go visit the ghost
villages, because some of those mountaintowns are really really remote. I'm not
a huge fan of driving on thosemountain roads. They're not so well paved
(38:59):
and many places, but if youstick to the coastline then it's fine.
It's it's a little windy, butit's nothing like a terrifying road along the
Amalfi coast. And again there's notraffic, so if you're confused, you
know, you can go as slowas you need to. There's no problem.
Okay. Can you pick up arental at Solanto or even Pestum?
(39:21):
Yeah, I think actually, rightin Pestum you can get them. I
think a lot of people will tendto get them in Naples because that's often
where they'll fly into or Clara.Now, yeah, I mean there's you
know, the regular hurts and allthe major rental companies are all accessible in
that area. Yeah, yeah,sure, Yeah, I have a good
experience at Naples Airport with a rentalcar company. But I'll tell you about
(39:45):
that one later. And so what'sthe best time of you to go.
It sounds like summer might be prettynice, but is the shoulder seasons also
really lovely? Yeah, I definitelyrecommend going in a or the fall,
especially the fall because it's harvest.And so you've also got the addition of
(40:05):
wine. There's a lot of beautifulChlento wine. And in a similar way
to the food, it's a lotof sort of small family farms, people
that do things in a very verytraditional way, and because the real estate
is very inexpensive in Chalento, thewine tastes way more expensive than it actually
is. I mean, so muchof wine costs what it costs because of
the real estate that it's grown on. This is why you know Napa Valley
(40:29):
or Sonoma wine in California it isso much more expensive than some French or
Italian labels. It's because the propertytaxes. So Chlento has a lot of
great stuff and the fall is thebest time because you can go visit these
vineyards and even watch the crush goingon. And of course everybody has a
tasting room that you can visit.And in the summer, you know,
(40:49):
August is the month when they're thebusiest, so that's where you're going to
get people from the rest of Italy. There's also a lot of tourists that
come from London and from Belgium inparticular, are a lot of people who
are interested in hiking and biking fromBelgium come to Shelanto and the Netherlands as
well. So it's it's fun becausethey're you know, there's beach parties going
(41:12):
on, there's the Federgoalsto celebrations,but that's not when you're going to have
sort of like the most attentive serviceand wind up getting invited into somebody's home
because everybody's busy, everybody's working,and everybody's you know, enlisting, you
know, if they're working in hospitalityin any regard, they've enlisted every member
of their family to come help.But if you go in the spring or
the fall, you really get moreof the experience of interaction with the locals.
(41:38):
Yeah, I think that full isalways my favorite time to go,
actually, I just I love thatthat feeling of harvest, and it's a
bit of celebration as well. Andthe weather is usually really good too,
so it's still warm. Yeah,they will joke. I usually see on
Facebook, usually around early October,somebody will post a meme that says,
oh, it's August the fifty third. Because it doesn't stay warm, they're
(42:02):
longer, which is good because youknow, most of the folks there are
working in hospitality in some way,so they don't really get a chance to
enjoy the summer themselves. But theycan still go to the beach well into
October, so it's an advantage forthem and to ferries go up and down
that coastline or is it more uptowards the Amalfi coast. There is now
a ferry from the city of Agropoli. When I see city, it's a
(42:28):
very small city. So yeah,you can go from Agropoli to I think
most points on the Amalfi coast.Usually when we do it, we'll go
into Salerno and then there's a ferrythat you know, stops at every single
town on the Amalfi coast and thengoes out to Capri or you can go
into Naples by boat that way.But yeah, there, and there's also
lots of because it's a fishing areatoo, there's lots of sort of private
(42:51):
boat rentals, so you can paya local fisherman. Basically what is you
know, seems to be a veryreasonable whole amount of money for a private
boat ride all along a very pristinecoastline. That's my idea of heaven.
Actually, I love I love aboat ride. My husband's actually a sailor,
(43:12):
but he doesn't he loves ocean racing. Oh wow, So it's not
fair because I say, come on, let's go ride in a boat and
you can do all the work andI can just sit on the day.
No, so we have to hiresomeone. Yeah, oh that sounds magical.
I really I like to sound ofthat. Definitely. I've got massive,
(43:32):
massive regrets now about not stopping therelonger. You mentioned that it takes
a little while to settle into thelifestyle. There's how would you recommend staying
in that area just to really reallyappreciate it the most. I think like
five days is really ideal because,yeah, you get to settle in,
you can explore some you know,get some beach time in. My favorite
(43:57):
beach is a town called Santa Mariacastell Abate. Castellibate, the medieval village
which is just above the beaches onthat list of Italy's most beautiful villages that
it really is a special place.And then the beach town is absolutely gorgeous.
So yeah, you want some timefor the beach, you want some
time to go to Pestom, youwant time to go explore the mountains.
(44:20):
There's an amazing zip line in thearea, which I highly highly recommend.
And what's you know great about Chilentois that you are close to major cities,
so you know, for people whoare traveling and wanting to make the
most of their visit. You know, you can fly in a Rome and
you know, do the coliseum andthe Sistine Chapel and all of that,
(44:43):
and then take the train or flydown in Naples and then have this really
wonderful sort of off the beaten pathauthentic experience with all the great food and
the wine. So, you know, other parts of Italy, even though
they're beautiful, a Calabria or evengoing to Sicily, you know, might
require more time, but Chilenzo wasreally close. And even if you want
to drive from Rome, we're fromNaples, it's like from Rome it's about
(45:06):
three hours. So it's good andthat it allows you to do both like
the touristy stuff that you want todo because you're in Italy, and then
also put in the off the beatenpath part. Yeah, I really love
this combination idea. I think thatit's going to become more and more popular
as well when we can travel again, which hopefully that's very soon. But
(45:27):
yes, I think definitely being ableto access these beautiful, slower pace of
life as well as those top sitesthat people want to see, I think
combining those two is an excellent ideathat I will certainly be taking more advantage
of actually myself and fielding that intomy plans. Yeah, I think everybody
is discovering, you know, morenatural tourism right now. I mean,
(45:51):
I know here in New York we'revery restricted in everything right now. Our
restaurants aren't even yet open for indoordining, and so if you will have
been going swimming, they've been goingup to the mountains in the Hudson Valley.
They've been going to the beaches ofLong Island in New Jersey, much
more so than ever before. AndI think that's a travel trend that will
continue. You know, even aspeople are able to travel in Europe again,
(46:13):
I think they're still going to feelmuch more comfortable being in a place
with lots of space, even ina hotel. You know, there's lots
of these agri touris mal properties inLento where even if there's other guests there,
they're you know, you're very wellspaced and where you're not going to
be worried about being in crowded situations. I mean, I'm sure people will
crowd into the Sistine Chapel again,I have no doubt that will happen.
(46:36):
But I don't know that anybody's goingto want to do that in the next
two or three years. Yeah,possibly not. Possibly not. Now I
have one last question for you,Danielle, about the Lento Coast, and
that is, what is the oneplace where you go to and you haven't
been there for a while now,and then one place that you'll go back
to that you'll know you're back andit's very special to you. That's just
(46:59):
going into the town of Capacho andyou know, being my grandmother was there
and this town was my storybook.It's like my heart. And as soon
as I arrive there, I mean, I just have such a feeling of,
you know, home, And it'sfunny because I know I'm not from
there, and yet I'm in thetown historian who's always sitting in the piazza,
(47:20):
like I can rely on him tobe there. And as soon as
I pull up into town or Iwalk into down usually ah child, then
yeah, I may it, comesit down, let me offer you a
coffee. And it's just like I'vealways been there. Oh it does sound
really love, really wonderful plays andone that we all hope to get to
(47:44):
very very soon. Now. Ido have huge regrets, huge regrets about
not spending more time there and wesort of just sipped through. But Daniel,
how can our listeners stay in touchwith you and learn more about the
Chilano Coast and that amazing food andbuffalo mozzarella site is feast Onhistory dot com
and we have moved all of ourprogramming online this year. So we have
(48:07):
wine classes, we have cooking classesthat are filmed in Italy, and we
have my art history tours brought online. And I'm actually bringing in some of
the guides that I work with Inclentoto be online with us and to share
what we're doing with the world.So you know, this is something that
we adapted too because of COVID,but it really it made us realize that
(48:27):
we could actually share this with peoplefrom all over the world because you know,
I'll cost a tiny amount compared toactual travel. And so yeah,
the Feast on History, Food andWine school online is the way you can
engage with all of this stuff nowand then hopefully we can all travel again
soon and we can help you withthat as well. Wonderful, that's so
exciting. I can't wait to havea look at and knows you around that
(48:51):
it's something you know as I've recordedthese podcasts over the last few months,
just even just talking about Italy andall the places you can go, it
does actually bring me a big senseof calm. So I think trying these
online experiences can just transport you toanother place, just even for a moment,
until we can all get back onthe road and travel again. So
(49:13):
go out to see Daniel. Thankyou for joining us. I really feel
like I can smell those Tyrannian seabreezes and I've almost had a little vocation
on the coast myself. Thank youfor having me. I really appreciate it.
Oh my goodness. Now those itineryideas I've been working on have another
destination to deal with. Hello,Chilento Coast. I absolutely must check out
(49:35):
those buffalo My mind is boggling thatthe cheese can taste even better than the
one I trade in Naples. Nowyou can easily get directly to Silano,
which is at the end of theAmoufi coast and the start of the Chilento
Coast, from Rome in about twohours by train. This is actually way
easier in some respects than going toPositano or even Sorrento, because you do
(49:57):
have to do a transfer or twoin those cases. So the Cilento Coast
makes a great option if you wantto escape the Amalfi Coast crowds, or
you're looking for a more budget friendlydestination with similar scenery and experiences. And
I even heard that you can seeCapri listening in the distance from the property
where Danielle's cooking classes take place.Make sure to drop by Danielle's website feast
(50:20):
on History for all the details ofthat experience, plus their online food and
wine school. All the details areany episode show notes at Untold Italy dot
com, forward Slash thirty eight,or you can also reach them via your
podcast app. Now that's all forthis week, Gratzia, thanks so much
for listening, and I hope youenjoyed this episode. If you did find
it useful, we would be sograteful if you could share our podcast or
(50:43):
leave a rating or review. Thishelps us reach more people and help them
plan their own memorable trips to Italy. Garratzia, and now I'm going to
close off and dream about Buffalo mozzarella. Honestly, it can be life changing.
Chow for now. The Until Italypodcast is an independent production podcast editing
audio production and website development by MarkHatter, Production assistance and content writing by
(51:08):
the other kt Clark. Yes thereare two of us. For more information
about untold Italy, please visit untoldItaly dot com
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