Tag Archives: Paestum

Old Stuff and Coastal Drives

Last night after settling into the hotel we headed to Oasi for dinner.  Being down south and close to the ocean, it is great to have non-pasta seafood meals. The entire area is pretty quiet. Most places appeared quite shuttered.  Overall everything was good.

This morning we woke up and went on a run around the ancient town of Paestum.  We actually got very lucky as it started raining very hard as soon as we got back to the hotel.  We had some breakfast and it was time to enter the ancient town of Paestum just as the rain cleared and the sun came out.

The ruins reminded us of Pompeii; however, some were in much better shape including the temples.  It was mind blowing to be standing in a temple that was built nearly 2,500 years ago.  Throughout the town there are a ton of stray dogs.  Some were quite cute.  Of course, we kept our distance even though they appeared friendly.  

After walking the ruins we headed in to the museum next door. It was quite impressive all of the frescos they were able to recover.

After we saw the sights, we hit the road to find a small costal town for lunch.  Below Paestum there is a large national park that is also a UNESCO site called Cilento. It sort of looks like Amalfi with towns tucked into little coves but the hills are more gentle. We drove the coastal route which is really, really beautiful but also pretty windy so we were happy to not encounter too much traffic. Our first attempt to find lunch brought us to a beautiful seaside locale; however, everything was closed up tight.  Luckily we were able to find a place in the nearby town right on the water called Cefalu. The family who ran the hotel and restaurant have a sister in San Diego who owns a restaurant in Cardiff called Trattoria Positano. They were nice and we chatted about their trips visiting California, they told us we had to come back sometime when it’s Summer. We would happily come back here.

Cow a Bunga

This morning was bittersweet.  We were very sad to say goodbye to Matt and Anna. We had such a great time with them exploring Rome. Maybe even too good of a time at points. That being said, Italy isn’t going to see itself, so we must move on. We left the apartment and headed to the train station to pick up our next rental car, the Alfa Romeo.

Southward bound! We got on the autostrada towards Naples and even though the weather was a little unsettled the scenery got more and more Spring like with green hills and flowering fruit trees everywhere. For quite a bit of the drive we had Vesuvius directly in front of us and eventually the ocean. Towards the end of drive we took a detour looking for food then Waze went on the fritz so we got a little lost around Salerno. Instead of driving the highway for the last 20 minutes we took the coastal route through fields and a ton of greenhouses with the ocean peaking out between the Cyprus groves that separated us from the beach.

When we got into Paestum, our destination for the day we were ready for lunch so we went directly to the buffalo farm called Caseficio Berlotti. We thought they’d just have a little store where we could buy some cheese or a snack but they actually had a really nice restaurant serving dishes based around meat and cheese from their herd, which were also hanging out in the paddock right by the window. After lunch we got to meet the buffalo, including the little babies, some of whom were born last week and were really, really cute.

Paestum is an archeological site like Pompeii except it never got buried in ash and also it’s not as crowded. (And there are the buffalos across the street). Now we’re in the hotel hanging out and the plan is tomorrow to check it out and also maybe see the beach if it’s warm enough.