Day 31 Waiting for drugs

Had planned to go to Roca Vecchia today but cancelled due to nasty, nasty cold. Have spent two of my 31 days here in bed. Went to pharmacy mid morning, which I can practically see from my window, to get something to help with plugged nose but found it closed. On the way back, stopped at the dry goods store for very large package of very small packs of kleenex. Paper tissues do not come in boxes here.

Stood at the cash, wondering out loud about the pharmacy being closed. The woman behind me looks at me like I'm nuts. Seems it's closed every Friday morning. Something about an itinerant doctor and a weekly medical clinic "over there."  I didn't have the strength to ask her what that had to do with the pharmacy being closed. In any case, "over there" could have been anywhere in the Salento.

She took pity on me, though. Said it would open nel pomeriggio. I went back at 5 p.m. and got some drugs. 

I'll go to Roca Vecchia some other time. Francesco promised. You might remember Francesco Aprile, the young author involved in this New Page project, 100-word narratives that are printed on posters and displayed in store windows. Roberta Gaetani, his girlfriend, studies archaeology at Lecce University. She's the one who told me about this ancient place.

It was built in the 1400s on the bones of an earlier civilization. (The Messapi tribes, populated this region a couple of thousand years B.C. before everybody in the then known world got sucked up by the Romans.)

Archaeological digs are ongoing.

http://www.viagginelsalento.it/roca_vecchia.htm (This is in Italian. If interested put it through Google translate. It's not perfect but you'll get the gist.)

 Roca Vecchia sits smack on the Adriatic coast