L’Aquila is a nice, elegant, college town without an abundance of things to see. At least not since 2009, when a major earthquake destroyed a lot of the city. You still see a lot of scaffolding and restoration work, especially around very many churches and palaces. I imagine that once all the restoration is complete, there will be more to see here. So a quick whiz around town was enough, before heading off to our first attraction for the day.
L’Aquila is quite high, so the morning was clear and cold, around 2° when we walked around town. As we drove the twenty minutes to the caves, we noticed a strange weather phenomenon, I assume, due to the cold yet clear skies. We noticed what looked like steam rising from the earth. We were, in fact, driving through thin clouds that had dropped down to ground level. In some places they were thicker and foggy, in others thin, wispy and steam-like. The short drive was quite otherworldly, ghostly, even. Which is always a good precursor to the Stiffe caves, our destination.
Mark loves the beach, as does Garry (who will join us tomorrow). Yoni is more urbane. Me? I like dark forests and caves. It probably says something about each of our personalities, but if you’re looking for deep psychoanalysis, you will be sorely disappointed. Let’s just say that I was quite excited and Mark and Yoni happily accommodated me. By the time we left the caves a couple of hours later, they were as enthused as I was. We were given snazzy looking yellow, construction-worker hard hats, some embossed with a bat glyph. Indeed, the roof of the cave has hundreds of tiny bats, hanging upside. But that is not the principle reason I wanted to come to these caves. An underground river runs through the cave, causing all sorts of natural wonders, including small underground lakes, waterfalls and a room of silence. Add in lots of cool stalagmites and stalagmites, year round 9° temperature, which was considerably warmer than the 3° outside, an easy walking wooden path and an excellent guide who spoke reasonable English, but made up for her lack of English with her knowledge and enthusiasm, and we had the perfect start to our trip.
