Southern Campania tour - Day 2

Grotte di Pertosa (Pertosa Caves)
The 1st stop of Day 2 was to the Pertosa Caves, situated in the green landscape of the Alburni mountain of the Cilento National Park. The caves were formed by many years of river flow & also beautiful stalactite & stalagmite conformation ("salt" columns). We started off on a boat and docked to carry on on foot. Beautiful, but a little dark with no flash allowed, so photos weren't good despite some artificial lighting placed at certain points. In the hot summer, it was a naturally cool place (all year round) with a temperature of about 18 degrees Celsius.

After the caves, we went for lunch at a farmhouse (Fattoria Alvaneta). It being a Sunday, the guide told us that on Sundays, the Italians would go to farmhouses for lunch. Here's a view from the farmhouse of the landscape & some of the food. If you check out the ravioli, it was the biggest ravioli I had ever eaten! 1 piece filled the plate! And the guide told us that she had requested that only 1 be given to each of us knowing we were small-eaters. My God! if you compare it to what we usually ate...
In any case, it was a really heavy lunch...

It so happened that there was a group of people celebrating the graduation of a friend who finished his law studies. My group (not sure if it was the wine or simply the natural mood of all) decided to sing him a congratulating song in Italian! The person was very happy and treated all present to champagne.


Carthusian Monastery, Padula
After a really long lunch (2.5 hours), we finally left the restaurant & proceeded to the monastery. Unfortunately, it started raining (the 1st rain I met since the start of of my trip). The monastery was situated near Salerno in Padula and dedicated to St. Lawrence. However, this monastery no longer had monks. It is a World Heritage site.

Well, what was funny was the giant omelette machine u see below in the atrium. It was built for a festival a couple of years back to replicate what the monks of long ago did to welcome the king when he visited...that was to create a giant omelette. However, this modern-day gadget was a disaster and failed to achieve the desired results. Hence, the machine has been placed here ever since.

Another thing observed were the many blank spaces seen on the walls. These used to hold paintings, but were taken down when the Baroque period came about (the plaster period).


The guide also told us about the different levels of monks. 1 level was those who had chosen to live a life of silence, only to pray. All they do was to stay up in the moutains to pray, alone & don't meet or talk to people. However, monks or not, they still needed to eat and maintain the monastery, so another group of monks would be the ones who were more "secular", i.e. they would meet people to buy stuff, etc. Hence, this became the splits in levels.


During the tour, we came to the confession room, which was where confessions were made in the presence of everyone (yup, not the booth kind). then someone asked what sins do the monks commit up here? Then the guide started to tell us the wine story. A long time ago, the monks in the monastery engaged in agriculture too, and 1 of the things they produced was wine for sale. However, there was a set rule that they were not allowed to drink wine. In any case, when they brought the wine to sell in the market, it was discovered that the volume of wine for sale did not tally with that produced. Guessing what happened, instead of punishing the monks, the rule was changed. Haha...