The last 4 days of our trip were in Tropea.

Why Tropea? That is a question I have gotten never, but I still think I need to explain it. When planning, I simply bought a large map of Italy, and googled things; the map gave me a better since of how far things were from one another when googling “Best beaches in Italy”, and Tropea was always top of the list. And, it was a central place to go see lots of other fun things; Bari or Lecce were close behind.

Getting to Tropea was not simple or without event. A few funny things happened, and here is basically how it went down:

1. We left Capri in a Ferry to Naples; 45 minutes, so far so good.
2. Take a subway from the ferry to the main train station, to take a train south. The subways are the only ones in the world without English translation. I was very lost, but couldnt let Taylor know I was lost.
3. At the main train station, there was a strike: we couldn’t hop the 3 hour train ride south. We could either a) rent a car, or b) fly on a regional flight. All the rental cars were sold out, so we got a taxi to the airport.
4. We missed the flight, and the next flight wouldnt put us at our hotel until after midnight.
5. We rented a Fiat, and I drove the 3 hours and 49 minutes to get our ORIGINALLY scheduled rental car in Lamezai Terme (we were supposed to get it after our 3 hour train ride).
6. Drove over an hour to get to our hotel in Tropea.

The most important part about this whole situation, was that we didn’t argue once in this stressful scenario!

What did you do in Tropea?

Our originally scheduled trip had us doing day trips from Tropea each day: that is why we chose Tropea (follow that link to see the original itinerary, and a few notes).

After a quick stroll on the beach and breakfast the first morning, we got back in the car and drove 90 minutes south to The coolest place we saw on this part of the trip: Scilla. This town is called the “Venice of the South” because it is an old fishing town where the water rises up between some of the buildings where the fisherman live as they head out to catch swordfish.

In a straight line, it is not that far from Tropea to Scilla- but the drive is a meandering one. It was a special, energetic kind of feeling to drive through the southern Italian countryside. In the middle of it, a funny thing happened. There was a dog that looked a lot like stormy. As we passed, we saw some sheep in the middle of the road. Within a few seconds, that dog that looked like stormy came right beside our car, along with three other dogs. They were sheep dogs, and they thought our Fiat was a threat to their flock. They barked, and were pretty scary. What is the protocol for running over a sheepdog in a foreign country? The irony of this moment was that the week before, I had just read a book to Mercy about sheepdogs, and how cute they were and how they bonded and protected their flock.

There is a castle perched up high, splitting the waterline of the town in half: one side has nice sand, the other side has a port and some great restaurants.

For this part of the trip, there were no solid plans: no restaurants as a destination, no objectives whatsoever- so we just walked around. I did hear on one podcast about how some people were able to get a kayak and paddle around, so thats what we did first to burn off some calories.

Walking past the castle to the other side of the town was an amazing walk: the town was just so, so beautiful. We meandered, and got some lunch, then headed south to Reggio Calabria: The most beautiful kilometer in Italy. Below are some pics from this part of the trip: click on the image, and it should show a full-sized version.

My honest opinion? This was a phrase for the town that has stuck around entirely too long. The story is that an earthquake destroyed most of the original buildings in the town in the 1800s, and they rebuilt this waterfront; it was beautiful, but I dunno; we had seen some beautiful things to this point in our trip, and this wasn’t holding up.

The only thing on the list for our time in Reggio was to get some Gelato from Cesare, and shut the front door: it was just such a surprisingly, amazing and by far the best gelato I had ever had; possibly better than the best ice cream I ever had in my life as well. I got three scoops because, Italy, and have 0 regrets. We were just glad the line was not too long because we were there ahead of the busy season.

The next day trip we switched up plans: we scrapped the drive East to see Badolato on the Adriatic Sea, and opted for a shorter trip: North to Pizzo.

I was disappointed. Our goal was to see the most beautiful beaches, and there were none. Also there was context for this part of the trip: we were averaging 20k steps a day, and 50+ flights of stairs, according to my Garmin. More stairs in Pizzo were hard to get excited about.

The Piedegrotta was a highlight in Pizzo though: a “church” carved out of the rocks where a ship was wrecked hundreds of years ago. The sailors on that ship prayed and said, “If we survive, we will build a church for you.”

They held their promise, and over the years, the size has grown and more “Statues” carved from the rocks.

Capo Vaticano was our last destination. Before going, all I knew of it was that it was the “Resort” part of the beautiful beach area of Tropea. However, their definition of the word is quite different than what I consider a beach resort. This day trip was intentionally short: we tried once again to see “the most beautiful beaches” in the area, known as “The Coast of the Gods”. A blog post I referenced showed some of the beaches on Google maps, and once again, we were a bit disappointed. Don’t get me wrong, they were great: but were there before the busy season and it was a bit cooler temperatures than I would have liked; and overcast/cloudy.

It turns out, the “most beautiful beach” was right outside our hotel in Tropea.

It was a great choice to finish up our trip: laid back, restful, adventurous, and without a schedule; well, maybe a little bit of a schedule, but no reservations- we could just do what we wanted. We loved the beach, and the water was just clear as glass.

What was the food like?

In Tropea, we went to:

• Hostaria Italiana da Nino for dinner the first night.
• Ristorante Il Pirate in Scilla, a pirate themed-restaurant for lunch.
• Cesare gelato in Reggio Calabria; best in the world?
• Il Convivo in Tropea
• Lido Azzurro for lunch, on the sand in Tropea (No website)
• Tropea Hostaria Italiana, a pizza place, our last night.

Our hotel had free breakfast, which was a great way to start each day. Breakfasts were different in Italy: No eggs, but cured meats (like salami, prosciutto, etc), fruits, pastries, lattes, etc.

A bottle of wine at dinner was around 22 euros ($25 or so?), and always hit the spot. They just tasted better than American wines at the same price point, and someone had to finish them each night.

Where did you stay?

We stayed at the Hotel Rocca Del La Sena, a short 1/3 mile walk from the historic part of the city, perched up around 100 feet on a cliff over the water. The view from our room was spectacular looking over the Mediterranean, despite the cloudy weather we had for much of the time.

The hotel was nice- the food was great, the people were very helpful. It was a very walkable location, and booked full. It had a pool (we didnt use, it was a bit cool, and the pool was tiny). What was different on this trip is that the places we stayed were secondary, as we were so busy doing other things all day, we spent very little time in the rooms.

The only thing we did not like was that our room had a bathroom like a college locker room with a big drain in the center, no tub, etc.

However, Taylor picked the place, and it was great.

What else?

While we were strolling around Tropea one night, after a bit of wine and before dinner, I got a text from a friend back home stating that a new pope had been chosen. We weren’t looking at our phones much, so had no idea, but I was pretty excited- and wanted to find a TV to watch this event unfold, almost expecting the pomp of a sporting event.

The first person I found that could help point us to a restaurant that would have a tv was a police officer. They are there to protect and serve, right? Anyways, I was confident and excited, and shared “They elected a new Papa!”, and asked where a restaurant was with a TV. They tried to see if I was in trouble or anything, then just realized I was a foolish tourist, and pointed me to a restaurant that would be showing it.

At the restaurant, we sat with the waitstaff; and a boat tour captain got to talking to us in Italian about the situation. We don’t speak Italian and told him so, but he didnt care. After several minutes, Taylor and I gathered that he was likely saying they like Americans, just don’t want an American as Pope.

Takeaways from the trip: There are a couple things that were hard to foresee when planning this trip from back home:

• This was the end of our 10-day trip, and it was a special experience; it was hard to appreciate the food after eating out every meal of every day by the end of our 10-day trip. This is a luxury we won’t repeat again for quite some time though.
• We were downright tired by this part of the trip: my legs weren’t ready to tackle that many flights of stairs each day for 10 days (my Garmin said 50 flights of stairs daily for 10 days).
• Going in the “off season” was great.
• The adventure part was amazing. We didn’t have any solid plans, and it was fun to figure it out together.
• Google maps worked great: for walking and driving.

What a special trip.