Cosenza at night from above
Having a night tour around Cosenza is a rare activity for me. It’s not only because it’s winter where most people prefer to stay at home but also because I’m a student who live on a student housing and an dependant of university scholarship which means I don’t have ‘extra’ money to buy car. However, I am quite fortunate to have lots of good friends who kindly offer me a ride around the city, especially at night.
Tonight, I was fortunate (like always, alhamdulillah) to have friends like Gustavo and Silvia who willing to accompany us (me and my evil twin) for photo hunting around the city. The kindhearted Gustavo drove us to the top of the hilly Cosenza. For me, it’s precious time to snap Cosenza during the night and I can tell you, it is beautiful during the night.
Our night tour began at 7.30 PM when Gustavo and Silvia picked us from the university. During our way up, Gustavo, a native of Cosenza, fluently explain about a little history of the city (remember how I said that locals are the best tour guide ever?). He started his short ‘course’ of (what I called) “Storia della Città di Cosenza (The History of Cosenza)” by explaining about how the city was colonized by many nation in the past for example the greek, the norman, the byzantium, and the aragonese or the spanish. His explanation described how Cosenza was quite a metropolis in the past and how I realized that this history is part of the city and it build the face of the city now.
Eating at “The Witch”
Our first stop was the pizzeria up in the hill called La Strega (The Witch) which is adjacent to L’acquedotto Merone, an old aquaduct. We grab a pizza there and a menu called Stregotti which is a specialty of the restaurant. It is made from a pizza dough and stuffed with many things which we can choose. Since Gustavo know that I don’t eat pork, so he ordered the vegetable Stregotti (stuffed with mozzarella, tomato, olive and ruccola). It was so soft and tasty. Gustavo give me a piece of his napolitans pizza with alici, a small fish. This one is taste good too.
Stregotti
However, there’s an interesting fact that I discovered when we were busy deciding the menu. When I said I’d like to have margheritta (an ordinary pizza with mozzarella and tomato sauce), Gustavo immediately said to the waiter “two margheritta”. Knowing that it means one pizza for each of us, I quickly explain that it’s better to order just one, because the pizza is quite big and we don’t eat that much. Gustavo started to give me that ‘they-are-weird’ look to us.
Gustavo looked a little bit confuse for this since Italians usually order one type of pizza for him/her self. Here’s the challenge of how we were trying to convince him that usually we didn’t eat the whole round of pizza all by ourselves. In Indonesia, when we went to a pizza restaurant, we usually order one type of pizza and share it with three or four friends. Gustavo was surprised with this fact and said “Are you sure?”
Yes, sure!
The Old City Night Tour
After grabbing the pizza, our journey continued to the old town, where I have been here many times but not in the night. The Rendano Theater building and the government office look different, and last night it was quite merry (the parking lot) and I heard from Silvia that Giovanni Allevi was having his concert there. He’s a famous young Italian pianist, from what I know.We took a short stroll to the ruin of the church which quite gave me goosebumps. Our next stop was the castle on top of the hill where we can see the whole city of Cosenza. To be honest, I hate ruins in the night, but again, old Cosenza gave a new point of view during the night.
The tour continued where Gustavo explain about two rivers that meet downtown Cosenza. They are Crati and Busento. Legend said that in the past there was a wealthy king who was buried somewhere near the river with his treasure. No one ever found his treasure but the legend still alive until now.
Our next stop was the Crati river bank where we can see the dome of one of old and famous church, Church of San Domenico. The dome of the church reminds me of St. Peter’s Basilica in Vatican and this is also the reason of why this church becomes a famous landmark in Cosenza.
Then, we came to the end of the night tour. Let’s have a quick recap: it started with a soft stregotti, filled with laughter, a tooth-crackling photo hunting session, and closed by a cup of nice warm cappuccino in a café in down town Rende.
Thanks to Gustavo and Silvia for the free ride, and to my crazy evil twin for the companion. Good night everyone and have a great Sunday!
The Blue Bottle 