After a “sleep” on very hard beds (but not horrible), we woke up around 8 am, and did a short workout before starting the day. We wanted to go to Altamura, as Dave had researched the hell out of the bakeries there and the focaccia they specialize in, so yeah, let’s go to another city for bread. We were all for it. The town is a short 20 min drive away, but there are only a couple of buses, and on a Sunday there was one, one bus to take and we didn’t realize it was taking off 45 mins from our flat, but in 40 minutes. Now started the ever-lasting competition with Google Maps where we tried to “beat the ETA,” so we walked, and didi so extremely fast, but we beat the AI of Google by 6 minutes! Victory is ours (and we probably saved a few lakes along the way). Just a short trip later we were at Altamura. We found the traditional bakery in the old town, and ate a couple kinds of delicious focaccia - roasted red onion one and then a tomato and regular onion one. It was amazing, worth the speedwalk/run.
So if you don’t know, in Europe, Sunday is a rough day for tourists because 75% of things are closed, and Altamura was no exception. We wandered around for a minute and then wanted to go back to Matera, and so we were hoping to take an Uber back (which we looked up beforehand and was totally an option), but Uber lied! The app said there were drivers available, but there weren’t. After exhausting all other options (walking - 4 hours, other rideshares - don’t service that area, train- non-existent), the only option was a bus back at 4:45 pm, 3 hours later, and so we sat at a café/bar in the main plaza (where Dave did a “dad nap” at the table - see picture evidence) until we finally made our way over to the bus stop. We didn’t want to hoof it back to our flat (although we thought about it, starting walking and realized our feet needed more of a break), so we found a taxi at the bus stop to shorten the 45 minute walk to an 8 minute drive.
Once back home, we took a short nap before heading back out. We explored the old town which was extremely beautiful. Matera is the 3rd oldest city in the world and extremely cool to explore all the nooks and crannies of this old town. We had a subpar dinner (pumpkin and pasta don’t really go together, but they tried to force it), but the ambiance and scenery were stellar. We made it back home around 9:30 pm to get ready for the next day on the bike!