The ULTIMATE Southern Italy Road Trip - Monopoli, Matera, Castelmezzano (Travel Guide)

Packing up the car is like an Olympic sport around here with four people and food and backpacks and everything else. We're leaving Polignano today. We're heading to Monopoly, right guys? A town like 10 minutes from here. We're going to go walk around and go grab a coffee, which we definitely need after the drama of packing up the car. It's a little hazelnut beret. Look how tiny it is. Look how delicious that looks. A euro 30 for each cappuccino and a euro 10 for my macchiato. That's like the most most affordable and most delicious coffee we've had so far in Italy. Beautiful smile. Appreciate your time. Thank you. Have a good day. Awesome, you guys. I really appreciate it. So this is pretty awesome. You're walking by the pier here and they have all these amazing photos lined up. What a great first stop. Such a quaint pretty old town and the castle was really cool right on the water but loved all the shots of the locals and tourists alike. People were so friendly. I think now we're heading to Matera. We just arrived to Matera. We decided to come have lunch before unpacking the car and all of that stuff. We came to this place called Pasta Ghianda. The Way of Pasta. Yeah, it's like it's casual pasta so like in paper dishes. Yeah, it has amazing reviews and the guy was so knowledgeable. We got the most traditional one that he suggested. It comes with the pasta in the shape of little ears that's local to this area. I forget the name of these two but I'm sure we'll learn it eventually. Well, I got mine extra spicy so there's lots of chili flakes Wow, look at that. Wow, this is amazing. Just entered the cistern here in town. It's only three euros to get in. The guy said it takes about 15 minutes to walk through. It's pretty cool as you're walking through. This place is huge and it was all man-made. We got new luggages you guys. Which one do you think is mine? Not that one. I went with Big Daddy. Level 8 sent us so many different bags to try. It was so hard trying to choose which one I wanted to bring with me long term. I'm experimenting with a bigger bag on this trip. I went with the textured navy blue in the 24 inch and it's been so nice having all of my extra clothing options for Italy. Let me show you guys what's inside. First thing I love is that there is compression straps on each side so it just buckles and then you just pull it tight and it just squishes everything down. I also got these level 8 packing cubes. They're super sturdy and thick. I really like them. This is like an old junky one that I have and these are obviously so much better quality so I'm really happy to be using these now and then let's see. There's so many pockets over here. I mean you can just put any little things to organize in there. I just have some eye patches right now. I love how much space this bag has but a few weeks ago I took a short trip to Louisiana to visit my family and I used the level 8 grace luggage which they sell on Amazon. It's their most affordable option. It's carry-on only and my favorite part about it is that it has this front laptop sleeve which makes it super convenient because I didn't have to bring a backpack so it made it perfect for a short trip. Let me show you my suitcase you guys. Look how awesome this is. I got the aluminum aluminum aluminum. I love how sleek this looks. It is an aluminum carry-on. I love how durable it is. This is zipperless with dual TSA locks which is really nice. We just started using these so we'll give you a long-term review down the road but so far I've been loving it. My favorite part are these wheels. They are super quiet and it really takes off on you. It makes it a lot easier going down these European cobblestone streets. If you're interested in any of these suitcases we're going to leave a link in the description box below. All right it is golden hour. It's almost sunset. Let's go explore Matera, the third oldest city in the entire world. What an incredible first view of this town. Perfect timing. What a start right? This might be the best view in town right here. Thank you guys. Appreciate it. Where are you guys from? Malaysia. This unique place uses furnishings and sculptures to portray and illustrate life in the home in Matera up until the end of the 60s. There is the kitchen area, the store where there is the donkey and some farmyard animals, and the area where there is a double bed and a raised bed as well as a small space that was used for the toilet. All right that was a fun two dollar museum to see what life was like here in Sassi. What a beautiful sunset. Great way to end the day right? Yeah the music is, he's so good. Dad tell me what you learned. It's an optical illusion across the Sassi valley. It looks like it's a quite a distance. 40 minute walk looks like to me. Four minute walk. Optical illusion. That's crazy. We only had one night here in Matera. We are checking out now. We're gonna drive about an hour and a half to the town of Castelmozano where we're gonna be staying for the next two nights. Wow look how many bags we have. We had to separate all of our bags because we're just bringing little day packs to our next place and we're gonna leave the luggages in the car because there's lots of stairs and it's a little hill town. So we just arrived here to Castelmozano. It was an hour and a half drive from Matera to get here and we came because there's a super unique activity that you can do. You can zipline from this town to another little hilltop town and back which is I think it's called like the angels flight or flight of the angels or something like that. Looks amazing. Yeah it looks so fun so that's what we came here to do. We just checked into our really unique accommodation here. It's the cutest cottage carved into the stone and we have like this vintage little kitchen. The floor is all stone. It's so cute. So in here we have where we're sleeping. It's only a one bedroom so we have the sofa bed which they already made up for us and then they have the little living room sitting area and then they have the main bedroom in here and wait Tommy come in here. I saw the cutest little thing. I mean it's not you don't really use it but that's like an old school like water basin. This place is awesome. It's very cool. We're right in the cave. Yeah. All right sweet. I'm excited. Yeah and it's the the hilltop village and yeah it's just a really unique place here in Italy. I think this town was voted like one of the top 15 prettiest villages here in Italy. We just bought our tickets for the zipline. We're doing a tandem situation. It was 78 euros per couple to go or I think it's like 45 euros if you go by yourself so we saved money by doing it together plus we want to do it together right? We're just waiting for our bus now so the bus takes us up to a hill I believe then we walk 30 minutes to the start of the zipline. You ready? I'm like getting more nervous the more I think about it. I haven't thought about it until like this moment but it's like setting in. It's setting in. It's a really really deep gorge out there and it's I think it's one of the fastest in the world if not the fastest so it's gonna be pretty exciting. Dad you nervous? No. No? He's not the best with heights you guys. We kind of had to convince him to go. Mom needs a partner though so you're not nervous are you? At all? Yeah okay. Dad and Sammy. I'm freaking nervous. Okay let's do it. Let the 30 minute hike begin. Pretty and pretty steep right? And up this guy halfway there. This hike's no joke right? I'm walking my tippy toes to get up here. Exactly. You can probably tell by my breathing. This makes me more nervous because it's just going higher and higher and you have to So we started by that church right there. Hiked all the way up back down and straight up this guy. All right we made it. You're not shaking yet Sammy that's good. Oh look how cute that is. Look how cute you are. Ready to go? So we're on the flight of the angels and it is a 70 second ride. Nice. And we are going up to 160 kilometers an hour. 160? I think so. I thought it was 120. I don't know. It's fast either way. Enjoy. Fly like an eagle baby. Bye bye. Okay Sammy here we go baby. Ready? Thank you. Here we go. Wow look at those views. Okay it worked. All right what'd you guys think of your first ride? How was it? It was thrilling, exciting, refreshing. I loved it. I was so excited because I thought initially we were going to drop down and I was going to close my eyes but that did not happen. I left my eyes open the whole time so and it was great. It was easy like it wasn't scary. It was beautiful. It was really fun. It was really quick. It was too quick right? Yeah but so but we have round trip so we get to do it again. First zip line down we're gonna share a beer to celebrate a little bit before the next one. Salute. Oh yeah perfect. Gracias. 15 minute walk we're at the All right number two here we go. Awesome ride wasn't it? Oh yeah that was really fun. One thing I'm frustrated about the GoPro turned off right before our second flight so we are not able to capture that which is a really bummer. Tommy yeah because only you looked at me like four times is it on is it on is it on and I'm like yes yes yes and then literally as soon as we take off it just shows the GoPro just shows shutting off. It's the first time we used the GoPro in a year so I'm not gonna be using that for a while but this is definitely worth it. What a hidden gem this is. The town is so beautiful that adrenaline ride. There's also like via ferrata around here which is awesome. We're just in a rush. We're heading to the next town already but we're gonna grab some lunch here real quick. Perfect yes I really appreciate it. Nice meeting you too. Take care. So fun. So fun. Coca-cola just felt right. Who's that? We ordered three pizzas? You did. Wow. We thought they were small they're only like six euros and fifty cents a piece. Oh my gosh it's really affordable. Oh look how crispy and good that looks. It's thick crust. Oh your first piece is already gone. How is it? They're delicious. What a great start to our Italian road trip. You guys have any favorite places we visited the last week? My favorite place was Polignano More. I love seeing the coastline from the water. I thought that was probably the most picturesque town that we visited through all of the like Italy hidden gems that we've been doing. Great choice. What do you guys think? Oh I agree with Sam that was my favorite little town. It was stunning but also it was a great base to do our little side trips through all Puglia. That's true. I'm going to choose Matera. I love the ancient authentic city. It's so picturesque. Beautiful to walk through it. Fantastic. And my favorite stop is this town. It was so quiet. I believe it was that true hidden gem of this trip and the adventure with the zipline was amazing. This town at night too is so pretty with all the lights. Hope you guys enjoyed the video. We appreciate all you guys. Don't miss next week. We're going to be exploring a little more of Italy.