The perpetual chocolate croissants and coffee caught up with me on Day 16 and I was as sick as a dog. Moving on, Day 17 with the relatives brought us to Scalea, a coastal town in the Calabrian region about an hour and a half to two hours away from Cosenza. 

The ride up was amazing because for the first time, ruins were littered across the countryside on hills and entombed by modern buildings in a way we hadn’t witnessed before. Scalea was apparently a big port for the Byzantine Empire, and many of the structures and walls are still standing. So much so that I often wondered if some of the ruins we saw were even excavated, one in particular was sitting on top of a hill and looked to be shattered remains of a fortress of some kind but was completely alone with no protection or life of any kind nearby.

And where there is water, there is most definitely piracy. I’ll have to do a more extensive search when I get home, but apparently there, naturally, was some medieval pirates gallivanting the high seas because heck yes there was. Most of the outposts and fortresses residing along the beach were there to help ward off the rum guzzlers looking to bank ashore.

And why not? Because the beach is GORGEOUS!

After we toured Scalea for a bit, we headed over to another house owned by our relatives so we could feast and drink homemade wine and be merry! It’s going to be really hard to go back to America and not have fresh homemade sauces and pasta every day. 

We have one more day in Cosenza before we head off to Rome and the end of our trip. GAH!