May
18 - in the Parco Pollino, on the road from Noepoli to Rotonda. We continued to
climb, and descend, and climb again, and worked up quite an appetite. We kept
having to stop to put on or take off our rain jackets, as the weather kept threatening,
and whenever we had a descent we froze. There were not many towns, and those were
small and didn't appear to have sources of lunch. Fortunately, we did eventually
find a wonderful ristorante, La Fontana dello Brigante in the village of San Severino
Lucano. We were, as usual, the only guests, but had a wonderful lunch of homemade
cavatappi pasta with a tomato sauce with pancetta and scamorza, along with insalata
mista (iceberg lettuce seems to be the norm in the south) and an antipasto that
consisted mostly of different kinds of meat, including lardo (yes, it's lard)
but also funghi porcini and melanzane sott'olio. We also caught a bit of the day's
Giro stage on TV, and had a nice chat with the proprietors. They assured us that
with the excessive wind, we wouldn't be likely to actually have rain.
