{"id":2651,"date":"2015-06-11T19:04:17","date_gmt":"2015-06-11T18:04:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/merrington.net\/?p=2651"},"modified":"2015-06-11T19:04:17","modified_gmt":"2015-06-11T18:04:17","slug":"the-heel-of-italy-and-the-soul","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/merrington.net\/?p=2651","title":{"rendered":"The heel of Italy and the soul"},"content":{"rendered":"

Once we had landed in the marina at Santa Maria di Leuca, the village on the very heel of Italy, we wandered around the town we had visited two years ago. By chance, as the tourist season doesn\u2019t seem to have started, only Gelaterias were open. We have a gelato test \u2013 if the gelato is piled high out of the container, we walk by. If it is level or just slightly higher than its container, we order. The second test is pistachio ice cream must be a dusty olive green and not bright or flouro green. These two tests are fairly fool proof.<\/p>\n

Needless to say, the gelato was wonderful at Crema and Cioccolatta Gelateria and afterwards we walked down the street and noticed a medieval fort built to protect against the Saracens.\u00a0 The fortress is covered in beautiful caper plants, which must self seed into crevices of the hot, dry stone walls.<\/p>\n

\"Fortress<\/a>
Fortress – Santa Marina di Leuca<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

This part of the journey finds anchorages and marinas few and far between, we are sailing or motor sailing for 60 miles a day, leaving at day break and getting in late afternoon or early evenings.<\/p>\n

Two years ago, we went into the Porto Vecchio at Crotone on a Sunday.\u00a0 There wasn\u2019t much open and we only saw the very gritty area near the fish markets.<\/p>\n

\"Crotone<\/a>
Crotone Streets<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Yesterday, we walked up to the beautiful castle built by Carlos V and the old town, then down to the beach with beautiful sands.\u00a0 We commented that it didn\u2019t look affected by tourism at all, except perhaps Italian tourism.\u00a0 As we were departing this morning, we saw a cruise ship come into Crotone. We realized we were doubly lucky: we weren\u2019t there on Sunday and the Cruise ship was not in town.<\/p>\n

On our Western track, we passed the Promontorio di Capocolonna. \u00a0In a very small area, we see the ruins of the Temple of Hera Lacina, the Tower of Nao, a XVl century fortress, a church sanctuary and a light house.<\/p>\n

\"Capocolonna\"<\/a>
Capocolonna<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Temple<\/a>
Temple of Hera Lacina, in what was once a forest<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Once we had landed in the marina at Santa Maria di Leuca, the village on the very heel of Italy, we wandered around the town we had visited two years ago. By chance, as the tourist season doesn\u2019t seem to have started, only Gelaterias were open. We have a gelato test \u2013 if the gelato … Continue reading The heel of Italy and the soul<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[8,48,73,24,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2651","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-adventures-2","category-antiquities","category-italy","category-tradition","category-travel"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3VxXq-GL","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/merrington.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2651","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/merrington.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/merrington.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/merrington.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/merrington.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2651"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/merrington.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2651\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2657,"href":"https:\/\/merrington.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2651\/revisions\/2657"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/merrington.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2651"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/merrington.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2651"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/merrington.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2651"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}