Appearances Can Be Deceiving

We're on a motorbike tour exploring Italy. We'd like to retire here when we retire in the more traditional sense so are checking out the different regions to begin narrowing the choices from an entire country down to a specific town.

Calabria is the area we're in now, right at the toe of the Italian boot. It is a drier, more mountainous region and one of the less wealthy areas of Italy. Long neglected, there are many half completed construction projects where someone has attempted to bring housing or facilities to a place and given up before finishing.

However, much of the region is by the sea and housing prices are cheap for Italy (two rather important criteria for us) so we wanted to check it out. Not surprisingly, the view matched the reports - lots of empty, half completed modern apartmenty type buildings, trash lying about, pretty neglected really.

So when we drove into our hotel, we weren't surprised to see a place that was a bit run down, but we were hot and tired and wanted food so we didn't care. The hotel restaurant didn't look like much of anything so we headed out into the town for a walk and a half hearted search for a good place to eat. A long walk later, no luck, so we figured we'd settle for whatever the hotel had to offer and have an early night.

Now on this trip we have stayed in Lake Garda, Siena, and Amalfi type places - beautiful surroundings with food to match. We placed our order and expected to merely fill the hunger void.

When the food came out, it was fabulous - it was the best meal we had on the trip! We should have known better and not gotten deceived by appearances. This is Italy, renowned for wonderful food and the surroundings don't change that!