Museo Nazionale di Reggio di Calabria. And home

Sunday morning, our last day, and the reason I wanted to come to this city. Its archaeological museum. So plan was visit the museum, early lunch return hire car at the airport and fly back to London City Airport via Milan.

All started so well. The museum was superb. And was free on Sunday morning, saving us a few euros.

Displays from prehistoric to classical civilisation. Extremely well displayed with bags of information.

These two photos display something that is possibly not appreciated because of our historic love of marble statues. A lot of classical statues only had head hands and feet in marble. The rest was in wood covered in costume, which hasn't survived. So below is a reconstruction.
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 This reconstructed terracotta roofing was breathtaking.

 Now this doesn't look much, but was very interesting to me. What is it? Its a long jump weight. It seems when they long jumped they did so from standing start and threw out both arms wit a weight to pull themselves forward. It cannot be emphasised just how much physical exercise and sport was deemed important in ancient Greece, and therefore southern Italy which along with Sicily was dotted with Greek colonies. This might explain the admirable physiques we see in Greek statues.

 And another sporting theme here. The thing hanging in the background was a bag containing a discus. Specialist sporting equipment even before Adidas and Nike.

A crocodile head used as a water spout

What is left of a table

 So by now I was almost at the end and could be reunited with Thibault who had zipped ahead. Only the main reason I wanted to come here to go, the famous Riace bronzes. But just as I turn up I find what I can only describe as a rugby scrum. With no one really looking at this marble archaic statue.

The scrum edged towards an entrance with a glass sliding . Every few minutes it would open and allow in another hoard. But not to the warriors. Just another holding room, to await another glass door to open. Apparently this is all to keep the atmosphere at its best for the bronzes. They really get the cotton wool treatment.

But the bronzes are amazingly fine. They appear to be Greek bronzes on their way to Italy in a ship which was wrecked, thereby saving them for posterity. There are hardly any classical bronzes surviving. Quite simply you can melt down bronze but not marble. And that is what heathens did.

So, onto lunch. Thibault found a great place, which of course didn't start serving when it said it did. But my simple appetiser of ham and tomatoes was wonderful and generous.And the pizza was very good too.

And that left us just the journey home. What a journey. Reggio Di Calabria's airport is small. About four flights a day. Despite it being small they still couldn't signpost the car hire return adequately. After a few circumnavigations we saw an office but not any place to park, so I was turfed out to find out what to do. I was told the car hire office for our company was closed, but that was ok, we just had to return the keys in the key box and then park it anywhere on the road we could find a space, amongst all the residents parking. So we did. Unfortunately all in pouring rain.

Bedraggled we ended up in the airport to await our flight, the last of the day. Which was late.And got later. No information. We thought we would miss our connection in Milan.

As it happened, we were even more sure when we landed, and then were stuck on the plane for ages. It seemed they couldn't connect the steps top the plane. It turned out there 

wree six of us hopint to make that connection, and there was a bloke with a sign for us saying the outgoing flight was also late and so we might make it.

We didn't. Thibault and another younger guy sprinted across the airport. I huffed and puffed behind them. Three things I would note about airport jogging. Hand luggage is a handicap. The endless perfume counters at duty free don't provide ideal breathing conditions. And sandals on polished tiles are not the ideal surface. 

Fortunately there was a further flight two hours later for our sweaty little group. A late night arrival at City Airport. But our luggage didn't turn up for a further two days. 

And extra aggravation, I left my reading glasses in the seat pocket of one of the flights. Did they turn up? Could I even find out? Airport and airlines say should contact the other. Gave up. But in no hurry to fly Alitalia again.