Starting an Italian Villa and Enjoying Southern Italy (Ep. 19)

Transcript

Paul (00:00):
Hi, this is Steven Crutchfield. And I'm Paul Capelli from Villa Capelli in Italy, and you're listening to Travel Fuels Life.

Drew (00:21):
Hello everybody, and welcome to Travel Fuels Life, the show we share stories, tips, and inspiration to help you live a travel lifestyle. I'm your host, drew Hanish, and if you ever dreamed of living in an Italian villa, well, you're not alone. My guest this week, they not only dreamed about it, but they actually made it happen. So in this episode, I'm going to introduce you to Paul Capelli and Stephen Crutchfield, two American entrepreneurs who moved from New York to Italy, and they bought themselves a villa and turned it into a business. So since they are also podcasters, we're going to talk a little bit about some of the quirky things Italians do. They feature that on their show from time to time, and also talk about the quirky things Italians think Americans do. We're going to talk about some coffee drinking habits, and also the importance of dropping the pasta. So let's jump right in. As I pull up my laptop here in my hometown of Greenville, South Carolina, I reach out through the worldwide web and we'll get to Paul and Steven in the town of Pia in southern Italy. Hey guys, how are you doing today?

Paul (01:33):
Good, how are you? That's Steven. And I'm Paul, and I'm doing fine

Drew (01:38):
Also. That's interesting because I don't tend to have two people on the podcast at the same time, very often, and so it is good to introduce the voices because we can't see your faces and you have distinct voices, so that should hopefully help people figure out speaking. Sometimes when you get two voices that are exactly the same, it's like, okay, I have no idea who I'm listening to.

Paul (02:01):
No, these are different.

Drew (02:02):
So you guys are, you're hanging at the villa? Yes. All

Paul (02:07):
Right. Yes, we're in our cave-like structure from around the probably 14 hundreds. Oh,

Drew (02:16):
Wow. So is that the structure is actually that old

Paul (02:20):
No structure's, much older. The foundation of the structure goes back to the second century after Christ.

Drew (02:30):
Holy cow.

Paul (02:31):
Yeah, we're talking two. Yeah, not a long time. 2000 years.

Drew (02:36):
So we sit here and we think, oh, I'm going to go to Williamsburg, Virginia to see some historical places that are what, 250, 300 years old? Yeah, whatever.

Paul (02:48):
Yeah, we got some history going on.

Drew (02:50):
So tell me a little bit about your owning of an Italian villa, because I think this is interesting. I will hear people say, oh, when I retire I would love to move to Italy, and I'd like to have an Italian villa, and that would be a fantastic way to live out my years. And most people are just saying that, but there's no real intent behind it. So I guess my first question is, how did this come about for you guys? And then also was this something that you always wanted to do, or was it just an opportunity that you saw

Paul (03:25):
Me or you, yeah, you go, I'll go. This is Paul again. First of all, I think it is a lot of people's sort of romantic notion. It's sort of reading a romance novel, either having a villa in Italy or a place in the south of France. It just sounds great. So for me, I think, I guess I'm the one that initiated it between the two of us since I was born here in Italy and lived here until I was seven. It's that thing of always having a little bit of the home country and your soul, and kind of always longing for it. Then luckily enough, we were both quite successful at what we did, and we were able to put some money together. And one day when I came to visit this town with my three kids, we stumbled upon this ruin of a building, large building on the ancient Appian way, and walked in because the gate was open, uninhabited, fell in love with it, found out who owned it, and a year later we bought it and we bought it sort of. I was kind of on a lark. It was like, let's buy a beach house. And for what we paid for it, it was sort of buying a beach house, it was a vacation home, and let's see what we can do with it.

Steven (05:07):
And I think it came, everything, the businesses and everything that we developed obviously took time because we even have a video, we can link to it in your show notes of the whole renovation, and you'll see, because it was a ruin. And for us, it was just kind of a slow, natural progression. It's like, okay, let's fix up this room first. That's the most important thing, just so we have some place to stay when we come visit. Then it was like, okay, let's fix up the kitchen now, let's do this. And then it was just kind of a slow progression, and then eventually we just said, okay, why are we still in New York when we had this beautiful place in Italy and decided to make the move?

Drew (05:47):
So was this pretty immediate for you, or did you have to go through a transition?

Paul (05:52):
I think it was more immediate for a few reasons. One, I'm already Italian, so I kind of felt sort of home. I speak Italian back then, 15 years ago, I didn't speak Italian as well as I do now, but I was pretty fluent in it. And during the rebuilding of the villa, keep in mind it's three floors. I was going back and forth from New York pretty much every two weeks. Two weeks in New York, two weeks here in Italy, two weeks in New York, two weeks in Italy. So my transition was much more gradual. Stevens was a bit more abrupt,

Steven (06:38):
Not in some sense coming from New York City, but for me it was almost like coming home because I grew up in a small, tiny town in Texas. So New York was actually more of a cultural shock for me living in New York City. That was just unreal. And then coming back here, it was almost like if I had moved back home to Texas. So it felt like small town Texas. There are definitely cultural shocks of just different culture and different levels of in business where they just are very, very, very relaxed. We're coming from New York City. I was used to going into a meeting, let's discuss the issues. This is what we have to do in 20 minutes, you're done. Let's all go do our work here. They all want to have a coffee. Let's talk about the kids and

Paul (07:28):
Oh, no, no. The thing that everybody asks here in Italy, everybody, if you're running someone in the afternoon, the only thing they ask you is so you have for lunch.

Drew (07:42):
That's the most important thing in the world. Right, exactly.

Steven (07:45):
Food is

Paul (07:46):
Nobody in America ever asks. So you have for lunch, and it's not like, yes, you do ask it once in a while here, every single day.

Drew (07:58):
It's like they're keeping a journal to see what if you're eating properly or not. Yeah,

Paul (08:03):
It's all about food. It's all about

Drew (08:05):
Food. Yeah, man. So, because I've heard that sometimes the laws there can be a little loose as well. I mean, was it easy to get the business established, or were there some challenges in terms of trying to get that all settled?

Paul (08:24):
Italians and especially now, the European Union, and I guess the US isn't that much different. Everyone is great at making laws. Not everyone is great at following up on them and checking up on them. It's very easy to make a law, and that's why they changed them so often because they figured that they screwed up. But here being sort of in the hinterland of here in Southern Italy, we actually weren't that knowledgeable of what some of the rules and regulations were. So we just started working on the house, basically closed the front gate, hired contract, hired builders and contractors and went to work. Then five or six years later, someone asked me, so how long did it take you to get the building permit and we're like building permit? We didn't supposed have a building permit,

Drew (09:31):
But everybody was out having a coffee, so it didn't matter. Right,

Paul (09:34):
Exactly. Yeah. I mean, nobody ever came by and checked up on us. The gate was closed, so you couldn't see what was going on inside. So then when we finally had to do some work on the exterior of the house that you could see from the road, we got a building permit.

Steven (09:48):
And I will say too, just in general, the starting businesses in the states and also doing construction on our beaches beach house in the States, there's almost just as much bureaucracy state side as there is here. People love to say there's lots of bureaucracy, but I've experienced just as much, if not more on the United States side.

Paul (10:12):
And here it's a little easier too, because you can kind of schmooze people. Whereas in the states, the states, they're a little more Germanic about it. The rule where in Italy, the first answer they'll give you when you ask for something is, no, no, can't be done. No, forget it. Forget it. So you keep pleading. They say, look, come back in two weeks when so-and-so is here. So you come back in two weeks, hi, I am back to see so-and-so. The same person at the desk, and you say to them, especially if it's a woman, is like, oh my God, that's a beautiful dress you have on. Have you lost weight? And you start to schoo them

Drew (10:53):
Kind Word will get you anywhere. Right,

Paul (10:55):
Exactly. Exactly. Be nice to people and they'll be nice. Back to you.

Drew (10:59):
So was your first idea trying to build the villa out, or, I mean, you sell olive oil and other products, was it first about the products?

Paul (11:09):
When we first bought the place, it really was big enough that when you looked at it, you know, were looking at something that wasn't just going to be your summer cottage in Europe for a few months. It was a big building buildings and with some property around it, lots of olive trees. But the first idea was actually I guess both being marketing, advertising guys. We could actually build a brand out of this. So we started channeling Martha Stewart, and we figured we have so many rooms we can start renting out rooms, and who wouldn't want to spend a week in a villa? Then we had olive trees, which means we had olives, which meant, Hey, let's make some olive oil. Nice. So I made some olive oil, and then since I grew up in a family from this town, I knew about a lot of other products that they used every day that I knew Americans would love, and we started making some of those. But the rentals took off much more rapidly than the products. The products have taken a lot more investment to really make it go. Renting the villa was a little bit easier, and initially we started as sort of a bed and breakfast mostly to friends and people that we knew come and rent a room, that kind of thing. Now it's a little bit different now. It's a different structure now.

Drew (12:51):
Yeah, I mean, that helped you ease into being in keepers, I would imagine, if you're helping out with friends and people that you already knew coming in.

Paul (13:02):
Yeah, I mean, it's not that much, I keep making the analogy to a beach house or a summer cottage where if you're the type of person that likes to

Steven (13:14):
Entertain,

Paul (13:15):
Entertain and have friends over, that's sort of what it is really.

Steven (13:20):
It's just with strangers. So

Paul (13:21):
Yeah, just to do with strangers.

Drew (13:23):
Well, that whole bed and breakfast thing, I mean, I stay in a lot of bed and breakfast. In fact, I'm about to do a trip to Scotland, and I would say 80% of the places that I'm staying are bed and breakfasts. And to me, that's such a great way to get to actually meet people so impersonal, to go to a hotel where you get to talk to somebody who's doing their job at the front desk, but after that there's, there's not really a lot of interaction between you and the other guests.

Steven (13:49):
That's exactly what a lot of people like about the villa is they come here and they feel like they're really experiencing living in Italy. Even if it's only for a week, you just feel like you are living here, immersed in it, immersed in it. And so it's like we always say it's a much more authentic experience, which helps a lot. And advantage is we also have an apartment on this property, so we're always here. We can be as hands on or hands off as people, but normally people like us to be here because then they can come say, Hey, can you recommend a restaurant? Or What would you do with this vegetable we found in the market, that kind of stuff. Or where do we go shopping? Even so they get really immersed in the culture here.

Paul (14:34):
And part of that is because this part of Italy, Pia is, it's certainly up and coming. It's the fastest growing region in Italy for tourism, but it's not the traditional places that most people go to, especially the first time they go to Italy. It's not like going to Rome or Florence or Venice, you know, open up a guidebook and you find a place to go eat. You find interesting places to visit. There's not that much of it here. You really need to depend on more of the locals except for the big more touristy places. But if you're going to come and experience what we still think is a more authentic Italian experience, because Roman, Florence and Venice, yeah, they're Italian, they're beautiful, they blow away, but you know, end up sitting at dinner next to someone from South Carolina, which doesn't happen. This doesn't happen that much here. So you need a local to show you around.

Drew (15:42):
In terms of somebody coming to stay in that area, then do you usually tend to see them hanging out and having more of a really relaxed longer, like a week or two week time period there, because it's not like they can just probably easily pick up and go to the next place? Or am I wrong on that? And you do have people who just come in for a day or two and they're on their way.

Paul (16:06):
The way it's structured now in the, let's call it the high season from April through November, most people, we ask people, you get first dibs if you're going to rent the entire villa, which is 10 bedrooms for at least a week, and with family or friends, groups of people. And it's like having a private hotel is a big pool and everything for you and your friends or your family. And as you said, some people in the group just come because they just want to relax for a week or two weeks, and they basically sit by the pool and eat and drink some members of it. We tell people that you have to rent a car because there's really not much public transportation. They rent a car and every morning they'll go out to visit different parts of the region, and then they either come back for lunch or they come back in the evening and have dinner here.

Steven (17:05):
Yeah, that's what I was going to reiterate. Paul was saying, there's lots of great day trips from where we are kind of very lucky where we are. I mean, the longest is maybe an hour away, so for a day chip, it's very easy. You go there, you leave if you can, people get people up and moving. You leave by nine o'clock, you by 10, 10 30, you know, walk around, you have a really nice lunch, you can get back to the villa by three or four and then sit by the pool, have drinks, and still have nice dinner. So it works out really well. That usually ends up the rhythm of some people's stay.

Paul (17:41):
And speaking of rhythm, Americans especially sometimes can't get used to the fact that, especially down here in Southern Italy, the stores close at one o'clock and don't reopen till five, all the

Drew (17:57):
Stores. Wow, okay. Yeah, that would throw me off.

Paul (18:00):
So the first couple of days that you're here, you're sleeping in. So you get up at noon, 1230, and they'll come downstairs and say, where can we go for, can we go buy something for lunch? And it's like, well, all the stores are closing in 20 minutes. Oh, well, is there a deli? It's like, no

Drew (18:21):
Deli.

Steven (18:23):
Where can I get a slice of pizza?

Paul (18:24):
Yeah, they don't even have slices of pizza

Steven (18:26):
Here. No, it doesn't

Drew (18:27):
Exist. Wow. Okay. So when is the traditional lunchtime, and when is the traditional dinner time there? Then

Paul (18:35):
The traditional lunchtime is one o'clock.

Drew (18:38):
Okay.

Paul (18:39):
That's when everyone comes home from work, because everyone leaves work at 10 to one. The expression in Italy that usually the husband in the car will call his wife and he'll say, drop the pasta, which means he's 10 minutes away.

Drew (18:58):
Okay. Drop it in the pot, basically. Not drop it off. Yeah.

Paul (19:03):
Cause pasta takes 10 minutes to cook. So the expression, if you're 10 minutes away from anywhere, you just say, okay, you call someone and say, okay, drop the pasta.

Drew (19:13):
So if somebody is visiting then and everything is closing at one o'clock, including the places to go eat, how do you work your eating schedule? Well, no,

Paul (19:21):
The place to go eat in the bigger towns do serve lunch. The ones that have more of a tourist kind of feel along the seacoast and stuff. But if you don't get there by 1231 or if you get there after two 30, you're out. You're out of luck. Yeah. They'll

Steven (19:44):
Close the kitchen by two 30. Yeah,

Drew (19:45):
Yeah. Okay. And then what is your dinner time there?

Paul (19:50):
Well, the funny thing is that we don't usually eat dinner, US locals anyway. Okay. It's usually a big lunch and then snack on leftovers at dinner time. When the Americans come. It's more about dinner and nothing opens before eight o'clock at night.

Steven (20:09):
Yeah, I was going to say it's eight or nine o'clock is usually when you would start dinner. If you're going out to dinner, the restaurants won't, you're very hard pressed to find a restaurant that's open even by seven 30. I should point out to you. But we kind of started out as a dmv, but what happened, what now what we do is when somebody rinse the villa, they get the full use of a full kitchen. It's a fully stocked kitchen, so they can make their own lunches, they can make their own dinners as much as they want. It has all the pots and pans, all the utensils and plates and everything. And there's a beautiful eating area out in the loja area next to the pool. So a lot of people do that. They'll either have a light lunch or light dinner. What invariably ends up happening as well is that people come here. So a lot of times we get larger groups because we have a larger villa. So we're getting people either having a milestone celebration, a big birthday anniversary, or a family vacation. So they're coming here for, with anywhere between 15 and 20 people. So they're at home, they're usually at home, used to cooking for four people. Now all of a sudden I have to cook for 20 people. They realize after the first couple days, this is a lot of work, and I'm on vacation.

Paul (21:22):
They realize after the first day. Exactly. Cause most people come and they say, oh, this is such, we have this really ancient kitchen that is really right out of a fairytale book. And people say, oh, can we use the kitchen? We love to cook. Yes, sure. They cook once and it's like, Hey, wait a minute. Because they don't realize you got to do the shopping, you got to do the cooking, you got to set the table, you got to clear the table, you got to do the dishes. It's like, okay, no, I'm not doing this. Paul, Steven, can you cook for us,

Drew (21:50):
Please?

Steven (21:52):
That's an advantage here. Now we can offer cooking services for anybody who wants. They just schedule a lunch or dinner with us and say, Hey, we'd love to have dinner tomorrow night. And we had one, two groups back to back last year that had every single dinner here at the Villa. Yes. And that

Paul (22:07):
Was for two weeks,

Steven (22:08):
Two, three

Paul (22:09):
Weeks. Three weeks. Three weeks. So that was a lot of work for us. And then of course, so then speaking of that, it with modern times, and it's not just Americans, it's Brits and all sorts of people. There's always, so you have a group of 15 to 20 people. Of course there's going to be a vegetarian, there's going to be a vegan, there's going to be someone who's celiac, someone who's like, so it gets to be kind of a pain in the neck.

Drew (22:43):
I can see

Paul (22:43):
That. Oh, my favorite ones Are they come to Italy? No, I can't eat tomatoes.

Drew (22:49):
Oh no, well go home.

Paul (22:52):
Exactly. Yeah. I can't eat garlic or I can't eat onions. No,

Steven (22:56):
The worst one, poor woman, she has tomatoes, zucchini, and eggplant. She couldn't eat. She was here in the middle of summer. Oh, wow. That's our entire vegetables

Drew (23:05):
For the summer. So I take it that Italians aren't too concerned about a non-carb diet.

Paul (23:14):
No, no. Steven doesn't need, I don't eat anything with flour.

Steven (23:18):
I don't eat any grain or sugar. So that's a whole nother subject. But they've gotten used to it. But I will say to Paul's point, the celiac issue is that they're very, very aware of that down here, surprisingly, you'll have whole aisles in the grocery store just dedicated to it. And if you go to any restaurant here and even say Celiac, they'll get it. They'll bring you, they can bring you a non non-gluten pasta,

Paul (23:44):
No problem. And gluten-free pizza.

Drew (23:47):
Yeah. Oh, okay. They're very

Paul (23:48):
Aware of it. Yeah. And also for people who are lactose intolerant, one of the big things down here also is fresh mozzarella. So you go to your local mozzarella maker in the morning, they make the mozzarella fresh every single morning. But even there, if you're lactose intolerant, they make lactose free mozzarella. Now, I wouldn't need it.

Drew (24:16):
So this is a curiosity for me, being from Michigan, and this annoys all the people I know from Ohio. But what we'll do is whenever you ask us where we're from, we have to pull our hand out because Michigan is in the shape of a mitten, and we will point on our hand to exactly where it is that we live. So do Italians from your area, do they lift their foot up and point to the heel of their shoe?

Paul (24:44):
No, no, no, no. But yeah, the funny thing is, having grown up in the states from a not even first generation family, a immigrant family, people, most of the immigrants that went to the States were from the south, and most of them came from very small towns. So if you ask someone where they come from, they'll say, for example, Bari, which is our capital here, or they'll say Benevento or Naples, where they don't, don't really come from there. They come from a small town near there. But since they know that nobody would ever know of their town, they just named the biggest town near them.

Drew (25:35):
I was going to say, I think we sort of do that too, because nobody knows where Taylor, South Carolina is, which is where I'm from. So I just tell people I'm from Greenville, and then they don't know where that is either, so Okay. It's in South Carolina somewhere, right? It's near the mountains.

Paul (25:52):
I'm from North Georgia.

Drew (25:53):
Yeah, yeah, exactly. Give 'em a region, so, right. So talk a little bit about if somebody's coming there to visit. My first question is always about transportation, because when I first went to Italy two years ago, I was all nervous about going, because somebody tapped on my shoulder and said, you should watch some YouTube videos on Italian drivers, because you may not want to drive there. And I watched the worst videos I possibly could find on Italian drivers to where I was really paranoid going into Italy. But I was given the advice of, and this worked for me in Milan of pay attention to the front of your car, be an aggressive, to a certain extent.

(26:46):
When I lived in Philadelphia, I learned to be a little bit more aggressive in what I was doing in terms of lane changing and that sort of thing. So when I think about it, I think, well, I'd love to go drive through the southern part of Italy, but I don't know the quality of drivers, the things that we hear or watching those videos. And I know sometimes that stuff is just the worst case scenario, kind, kind of things. Is driving a good way to get around or taking a train, or what were you think is the best way to get around the area? Well,

Paul (27:23):
Driving is pretty much the only way to get around.

Drew (27:25):
Is it? Okay?

Paul (27:27):
Yeah. Because I, you can take trains, take trains from one big, one bigger city to another big city. Being our capital, I think is 400,000 people. It's not that big. But you're absolutely right about Italian drivers and the videos that you see. But those are mostly in the bigger cities. Like you said, Milan, Rome is worse. Naples is the worst.

Drew (27:53):
You know,

Paul (27:54):
Really have to be, it's aggressively defensive in all of those places. Once you come down here, yeah. There's always some idiot that's going to come out of a side street and try to cut you off. So it is sort of a constant game of chicken, if you will. But if you're used to driving in somewhat sizable town, you kind of get used to it. The worst thing is the parking one. People don't believe in parallel parking. They'll love to, if there's a space for three cars, they'll just pull in with the nose of the car and leave the asset out.

Drew (28:38):
Okay. I've seen that

Paul (28:39):
No matter how much room there is there. The other thing is that Americans aren't used to is that here you can park on the opposite side of the street, even on a two, two-way street.

Drew (28:55):
Okay. Huh.

Paul (28:57):
So you can park against traffic.

Drew (28:58):
So just grab a spot anywhere you can find one, basically.

Paul (29:02):
Exactly. Exactly. And that's legal. Everything now is rotaries here, roundabouts, rotaries, traffic circles, whatever you want to call them, because will, they're eliminating all the, as many traffic lights as possible. And also according to their studies, which I think is true, it prevents accidents, especially what we call T-bone accidents and saves gas. And saves gas start starting and stopping. Stopping. You're not, you're just kind of easing into. Now on the positive side, driving on the highways in Italy is just a wonderful experience because even though most of the highways are two lanes, there are some three or four lanes as you get close to the biggest cities. But most of the major highways are pretty much two lanes. Nobody, but nobody sits in the passing lane.

Drew (30:03):
Yes. That's the worst thing about American drivers. It drives me nuts. Exactly.

Paul (30:08):
I mean, American drivers just won't move because it's the only time of the day, or in their life where they have some control over everyone else's life.

Drew (30:19):
Absolutely.

Paul (30:19):
And they're going to take full advantage of it.

Drew (30:22):
I call it egocentric driving. I, it's like, yeah, it is. So I have to prove a point that I'm going to just hang out here, and I'm the faster driver. I'm not going to admit I'm a slower driver by getting into the proper lane,

Paul (30:37):
Or I'm doing the speed limit, so I'm allowed to stay here. Yeah.

Drew (30:44):
Well, I will say that my drive across Italy, one of the things that I really enjoyed about it, I drove from Milan down to Monaco, and I got onto the Autostrada. And the cool thing was just being able to get your ticket when you go on. And then it didn't matter what road you got on after that, as long as you stayed on the Autostrada, you just waited till you got off at the end and made your payment there instead of having to constantly go through toll booths whenever you switch the

Paul (31:17):
Highway. No, there are no toll booths. Just toll booths at the exits. Yeah. And the other great thing is the roadside eating places have great food, amazing sandwiches, and usually I think it's stock now, but when we first moved here, a fully stocked bar never

Drew (31:38):
Stopped. That seems a little odd, but yeah,

Paul (31:43):
Was

Steven (31:43):
Very odd.

Drew (31:45):
I could see that. Yeah. So have your vino on the way.

Paul (31:50):
Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. One last thing about driving. Yeah. Gas is very expensive,

Steven (31:56):
And the toll roads as well. The toll. Toll roads are not cheap either.

Drew (32:00):
If

Paul (32:00):
You get on, yeah, unleaded gas here is roughly eight to $9 a gallon. Oh,

Drew (32:06):
Wow. Okay. So how do you advise people to, I mean, you're saying that people should probably rent a car when they come there. Where should they fly into or how should they get to your area?

Paul (32:23):
Well, if you're coming from the states, the best places to fly into Rome, and then you can either drive from Rome, which is about four and a half hours, or you can take a flight, which is sort of a New York to Boston flight, 45, 50 minutes. It doesn't cost much. And then you rent a car at the Bari airport that we're near Bari, B A R I, and all the major rental car companies are there, and

Steven (32:51):
All the, you don't have to fly into Rome too. All the major hubs have direct flights into Bari. Right. Like

Paul (32:57):
Uni, Munich, Paris, London,

Steven (32:59):
Amster, Amsterdam. Yeah. Okay.

Paul (33:01):
Yeah. And in most cars, most cars run on diesel. You make sure you don't get a gasoline car because diesel's a lot cheaper here in the States. I think diesel is more expensive than gas, than unleaded.

Drew (33:17):
It is, yeah. Yeah,

Paul (33:19):
Absolutely. Here it's cheaper. And then there were a lot of cars that run on either methane or liquid natural gas, which is half the cost. Huh.

Drew (33:31):
Are you seeing electric cars now, or is that still kind of down?

Paul (33:34):
Yeah, yeah, there were some electric cars and hybrids.

Drew (33:36):
Okay. So talk about your area, and now, once somebody has gotten there, what are some of the main places or attractions that you would say would be, don't miss things to do?

Steven (33:52):
I'd say, I'll give you my top two, and then there's a few minor ones. For the first one, ano mare. So if you Google Pya, it's probably one of the first ones that comes up. It's like this, a beautiful seaside town that juts out into the water. It's actually where Red Bull does now their cliff diving competitions. It's just amazingly beautiful, small little town.

Paul (34:17):
It's this high stone promontory that jus into the middle of the sea. Oh, wow. It's Pono, P O L I G N A N O.

Drew (34:27):
Okay. It's always good to get the spelling, since of course, we can put 'em on the show notes page too. But yeah, sometimes there's some silent letters in there you're not aware of.

Paul (34:38):
Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

Steven (34:39):
And I would say the other one for me, it's not technically in Pya, although we sort of claim it is Matera. It's about an hour from us, but it's actually in Basilicata, which is right next to Poya. And it is this very well preserved town. It's an actual UNESCO World Heritage site. It's so well preserved. It's where they filmed Passion of the Christ, the latest. So it takes, it substitutes basically for old Jerusalem to some degree. It's just a beautiful town. And this year it's actually the European cultural capital of Europe.

Drew (35:15):
Oh, wow. Well, I just heard something else about it too, which is, and this is close to my heart, James Bond. The new movie is going to be, the intro is going to be filmed in Madera.

Steven (35:26):
Oh, yeah,

Paul (35:27):
I know that.

Drew (35:29):
So there you go. So you may have an influx of some of those James Bond, like groups of people who travel around looking James Bond location. So you probably will be getting a few of those of you

Steven (35:41):
Wonder Woman. Woman was actually filmed 20 minutes from the Villa.

Drew (35:44):
Okay.

Paul (35:44):
Yeah. Which another, it's another great place to visit. It's called Castel del Monte. It's Del Monte is where they grow pineapples.

Drew (35:54):
Huh?

Paul (35:55):
I'm joking.

Drew (35:57):
You got me. Exactly.

Paul (36:00):
No, but it's the castle on the hill, but it's another World Heritage site. It's 20 minutes from the villa. It was built in the 12 hundreds, has a lot of great history, including the holy grail and all that and that good kind of stuff.

Drew (36:15):
So for somebody who is trying to plan out a trip in that area, I mean, how many days, minimum, should somebody plan on to be able to get, nobody's going to get everything out of the area, but to experience as much as they can?

Paul (36:32):
I think it's your typical between five and seven days. Five and 10 days be, because I think as we said earlier, it's a more, I dare call it more authentic version of Italy. It's more of what I think most people would dream of. Spending a beautiful week in Italy is all about, like I said, you know, can't fall to Florence or Rome or Venice, just because they just blow away beautiful. But you also have to deal with the crowds and lines and all that stuff. Whereas down here you don't do that in here, really in the countryside, it's all rural and agricultural. Pia has 60 million olive trees. And it's unlike Tuscany, which is all based pretty much on the Renaissance here, there really was no Renaissance here. It's all ancient Greek, ancient Roman and medieval, and it kind of stopped there.

Drew (37:45):
Okay. Is the terrain kind of a rolling terrain, or is there a mountainous area or anything like that? Or what's it

Paul (37:53):
It's not rolling. Beautiful rolling hills. Like Tuscany, a little more rugged terrain. Okay. It's all flatter and more rugged with a lot of open spaces.

Steven (38:05):
I mean, the interesting thing about Poya is it has tons of different areas as well. I mean, you can go from beautiful seaside towns. There is a sort of mountainous park section called Garo, which is actually the spur of the heel, so it kind of juts out to the water. And then there's other areas that, there's the Muja, which is this national park. It's actually where they filmed all the spaghetti westerns back in the

Drew (38:29):
Day. So

Steven (38:30):
It has this whole different look to feel to it. It

Paul (38:34):
Feels like southwest of the United States. Yeah.

Steven (38:36):
So it's like they have all these different areas and that in different sceneries. So it's interesting.

Paul (38:44):
And Pia does boast the most spectacular beaches in Olive of Italy.

Drew (38:51):
And is that also because they're not overrun by tourists?

Paul (38:56):
Well, yeah. They're not overrun by tourists. The water is beautiful. There are areas that they actually call the Maldives of Europe. The water is crystal clear, and we're lucky enough to be on two seas who are on the Adriatic, as well as the Ionian. The Ionian more sort of landlocked between the heel of the boot and the instep, which is Calabria. But it's also why the seafood down here is so good, because most of it in the northern part of pier is rocky beaches. So there's a lot of algae and sea life so that the fish and seafood have just much more of a sea flavor to it. And then as you go further south, it's these the just blow away sandy beaches that you just can't believe how clear the water is. Oh,

Drew (39:51):
Wow. So what I'm detecting from you is that unlike Michiganders who hold their hand up, you just use terminology in step to let people the spur of the heel, so you

Paul (40:05):
Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. And we also define it. So once, if you say to someone, Pia, and they might know where Pia is, then you define it by whether you're on the Adriatic side or the Ionian side.

Drew (40:20):
So let's talk about some of the quirky things. Now, Paul, of course, you have a history with Italy, but in terms of what you've seen since you've been there, and I heard a podcast of yours. And will everybody know also that you do have a podcast that you've been doing for quite a while? And we'll talk a little bit about that. But I heard one of your episodes where you talked about some of the quirky things that Italians do that you kind of had to get used to when you got there. So what would be some examples of those

Paul (40:52):
Ahead, Steve? I start,

Steven (40:53):
My biggest one, it still is what they call Copia

Paul (40:58):
Co podia.

Steven (40:59):
See, I can't pronounce it, but basically it means like a hit of air. So they are deathly afraid of drafts. It, it'll be 110 degrees outside if you put a fan on them. We actually had this happen at a wedding here where we had people in the big hall. It was really hot, so we started setting up fans. So I put the fans, so it was blowing on the people. They actually got up and turned the fan. So it faced the wall. Meanwhile, they're dripping sweat. I mean, it is so hot. But no, if I get a little bit of air on me, I'm going to get deathly sick. Wow. It's this weirdest, weirdest cultural thing. They all have it. Even if, so, you'll see them wearing scarves a lot because gosh forbid, Ablo, a cold air hits their

Paul (41:43):
Neck because they have this fear of what they call the cervical, which is the your neck area. And I suppose the Italians are much more attuned to their own bodies than most of other populations. It's weird. They pick out these areas of their body that are being affected. But yes, Steven's, right? I, I joke to people say, oh, my sister just got pregnant. It was a draft

Drew (42:16):
Watch out for that draft. It's not in the water. It's in the draft.

Paul (42:20):
They'll do weird things to you.

Drew (42:24):
Okay.

Paul (42:25):
Don't even think about putting on a seatbelt down here.

Drew (42:28):
Really,

Paul (42:30):
People just like, if you put a seatbelt, they're like, where the hell are you going?

Drew (42:35):
So answer this one for me too, because I also heard about, and of course, the roundabouts kind of solve this problem, but somebody had said that you don't ever stop at a stop sign because you'll get rear-ended if somebody sees you stop at a stop sign because they're just ready to go. Is that true?

Paul (42:51):
It, it's an exaggeration. Okay. It's an exaggeration. Although we do joke that stop signs and red lights are a suggestion.

Drew (43:00):
Okay. But seatbelts, yeah. I mean, what is the difference? I mean, what does a seatbelt signify that makes them think that you're going on a long trip?

Paul (43:12):
Yeah. How can you get in any kind of bad accident if you're only going into town?

Drew (43:20):
Okay.

Paul (43:21):
Whereas if you're going on a superhigh, well, the people are going really fast. And also on a super highway, there might be more of a chance that you're going to get stopped by the police. But speaking about being stopped by the police and super highways and speeding and stuff, unlike the us, there were no speed traps involving police cars. You never, you'll never get pulled over by a police car, ever. You will never get chased down by a police car.

Drew (43:53):
So how do they enforce? Do they have cameras or how does that work? Cameras.

Paul (43:57):
Cameras, yeah. Ca cameras and speed detection devices where if you check into the alto strata, the super highway, the toll road, and so you get your ticket when you exit, the machine pretty much knows what your average speed was. And if you went over the speed limit, you're going to get a nice ticket in the mail.

Drew (44:25):
Nice. So do you, yeah, just stop at auto at one of those little pull offs and just enjoy yourself a nice espresso.

Paul (44:33):
Yeah, you stop. You stop and have a cup coffee and a cigarettes.

Drew (44:37):
That's to keep your timing down. Yeah. Okay.

Paul (44:40):
Interesting. Exactly.

Drew (44:40):
Exactly. Yeah.

Paul (44:42):
Oh, and the other thing. Thing, yeah. If you want to start a business in southern Italy that will fail the next day, open up a business that sells car seats for kids.

Drew (44:57):
No car seats.

Paul (44:59):
No car seats. No car seats whatsoever. The car seat is dad's lap while he's driving.

Drew (45:07):
The

Steven (45:07):
Other one, the, for me, which this is actually good advice for people who are coming traveling, is Italians do not eat or drink while moving, and they don't take their food or drink with them. So in the states, you go, you order a coffee at Starbucks, you get in your car, you sip in your coffee, in your car. That does not exist here. You drink your coffee at the bar. I mean, granted, some places will put 'em in a to-go cup, but you're expected to sit down, relax, even if you're having something to eat, you take that 10 minutes, five minutes, you eat it there. You'll never see somebody walking down the street with a cup of coffee in their hand and a pastry in the other hand, it just doesn't happen. Even pizza, you get a pizza, whole pizza, and you take it home, or you take it somewhere. If you're taking it to go, you don't eat it, like walking down the street,

Paul (46:00):
You don't eat and drink on the street,

Steven (46:01):
Or even in your car. You don't see somebody drinking the fast food in their car and eating. It just doesn't, that kind of culture doesn't exist. So

Paul (46:11):
This may be a shock to a lot of your listeners, but there are no Slurpee.

Drew (46:17):
Well, here's the question. Do Italian cars come with cup holders?

Paul (46:22):
Now? They do, but they're not really cup holders. We have in the States, in the States, they're sort of remote control operator where they turn into transformers now

Drew (46:32):
And

Paul (46:32):
They pop out of the windshield and stuff. Now they just have a couple things between the bucket seats up front where most people just put their tissues and telephone.

Drew (46:45):
So you had mentioned also to me that you had a podcast coming up that you were going to talk about some things that Italians find weird about Americans when they show up, right? Yes. Yeah. So what are a couple examples of those so we can avoid looking like Americans when we show up?

Paul (47:02):
Well, the most common one that everyone all times make fun of and Italian and Americans can understand it is cappuccino.

Drew (47:12):
Okay.

Paul (47:14):
So cappuccino in Italy is for the morning and the morning only. You do not order a cappuccino after lunch. You do not order a cappuccino after dinner. In fact, some restaurants will just say, oh, I'm sorry. We don't make those, even though they do. But it comes down to, I always explain to people in a very, I guess, New York way, think of kosher food where you don't mix milk, dairy products with other foods, right? So if you have a nice big, healthy lunch, do you really want to pour a warm cup of steaming milk down your gullet in your stomach with all that other food?

Drew (48:02):
Probably not, right?

Steven (48:04):
The biggest one, I think the other one is ice. Most Americans usually are getting their Coke with a big bunch of ice in it, or their iced tea, whatever it is, with ice water here, they'll put the soda in the fridge, so you're getting a cold soda or a cold bottle of water. But ice is very, very hard to come by. And people sometimes have hard time giving that up. We actually cater to that. We have an ice machine here. We

Paul (48:31):
Have two ice machines.

Steven (48:32):
But I think it also has to go with the way Italians. Italians don't drink a lot of soda, and they don't even have a really big cocktail culture necessarily. They drink wine. They also

Paul (48:42):
Drink wine, but they also don't have a cold drink culture. Culture, okay. If someone asks you for water, they'll say, they ask you if you want a cold or ambient,

Drew (48:55):
Ambient

Paul (48:57):
Room temperature. Oh,

Drew (48:58):
Okay. Room temperature. Okay.

Paul (49:00):
Ambient temperature. Yeah. Yeah.

Steven (49:01):
No, but not, and you can ask for it. I mean, a lot of the tourist places are used to it, but sometimes actually they'll bring you one cube of ice, or they'll bring you some crushed ice that they use to chill the fresh fish.

Drew (49:16):
Like, Ooh, that's nice. Why does my Coke taste fishy?

Paul (49:22):
Exactly. But the whole ice and cold drink thing, yeah. Goes back to the podia, the draft issue that they believe. And it may be true though, that if you drink a really cold drink on a very hot day, it actually does more harm to you than good.

Drew (49:43):
Well, it's funny because I just got in the habit of ordering water without ice, and part of that came from someone saying that your body works twice as hard to try to warm it up to your body temperature so that they can accept it. So it actually is harder on your system to drink cold water when you're sweaty and hot than to drink something that's room temperature.

Paul (50:07):
Yeah, exactly. And the thing I was thinking about the other day, because now I've gotten used to, when I make myself a drink, a cocktail, I'll put two or three ice cubes in a tall glass. Whereas in the States, we're used to filling up the glass with ice. And people, if you work in a bar, people will actually tell you, fill it up with ice for the drink. But at the same token, they get upset if they're not getting their money's worth. So for example, when people drink espresso in the states, they see a small amount of coffee in there. They think, well, I'm getting ripped off. There's no coffee in there. Whereas they don't think the same thing about having a glass filled with ice and you're not getting much of a drink, you're getting most of the ice.

Drew (50:55):
Well, and and I talked about this before we started recording the podcast too, that what I learned when I went over the first time to Europe was that I couldn't find a big American cup of coffee unless I wanted watered down espresso. And so I just was not in the mindset, whereas now I'm a scotch drinker. And when I went back to Europe, I realized that drinking espresso is kind of drinking a scotch. You are drinking a smaller amount, but you're savoring what you're drinking and enjoying and relaxing with it, rather than gulping down a big cup of coffee just, or to have it as a hand warmer.

Paul (51:37):
Yeah. Yeah. I also think that this a cycle different difference. That espresso here is a much more of a social thing. So if you go into, they call them bars here, but they're really coffee shops. So you into a coffee shop or you see someone on the street, you invite them in for a coffee because first of all, it's only going to take you a couple of seconds to drink the coffee. Or if you go into a coffee shop and order a coffee and there's someone in the bar who knows you, they will pay for your coffee. That's like, it's a social thing to do. So going to a coffee shop and you shoot the breeze with the people who work there, and it's a much more social thing. Whereas American coffee is a much more personal thing, as we talked about earlier. It's wrapping your hands around that mug and keeping it close to you, and it's all about you and that moment. Whereas in Italy, drinking coffee is about the social exchange that happens in the coffee shop with the other people. Right.

Drew (52:48):
Well, let's talk a little bit about your podcast and give people an idea because they'll be able to listen to that episode coming up. And then also the one that I listen to about the crazy Italian kind of things that go on, but just how long have you been doing the podcast, first of all?

Steven (53:06):
Oh my gosh. I think four years now. I think. Okay.

(53:10):
We, we've been a little bit bad about the last, we've just been so busy. It's been hard to keep up. So this last year we didn't keep up with it as much, but we have about, we're on episode 60, so we've been doing it a while, and the podcast is called Living Villa Capelli, and it's basically just about our life here. So it's like our experiences here, but also touching on cultural experiences we've been talking about. We also give tips about traveling. We give tips on food recipes. We did one podcast with his mother, Paul's mom who lives with us here. We want to do a few more of those. So it's just like the culture of Italy and our experience. We know we were having fun doing this. We kind of wanted to share that experience with people. So yeah,

Paul (53:55):
It is basically two American guys living in the hinterland of Italy and the ins and outs, the daily life. Steven doesn't, but I drop the F bomb quite often, so we

Drew (54:11):
Have to

Steven (54:13):
Explicit on iTunes.

Drew (54:14):
Yeah. Yeah. You got to watch that now. Keep the families listening. But yeah, so thanks Zach. So you've got, you've got a blog also out there, and then you also, I guess is villa capelli.com really kind of your hub for all of the stuff, all the activities that you do?

Steven (54:35):
That's pretty much it. Yeah, all of them link to each other. I mean, we basically have sort of three hubs, unfortunately, just because of the way it worked out. I needed kind of a separate place to actually host the blog and podcast because the other two sites weren't the best place to do that. So that kind of has its own side. And then there's links to that, which is the more the villa rental. So you'll see more pictures and information on our tours because we actually have a culinary and culture tour. We have a bike tour that we host, and then there's the other site, which is the product site. So you can buy olive oil and sun dried tomatoes, sea salt, all that good stuff. And so if you can't get to Italy, you get a little taste of Italy

Paul (55:19):
And all stuff and all stuff that we make ourselves.

Drew (55:22):
And so if people want to keep up with you guys and what you're doing and get inspired to hit that area of the boot and see what it's all about. You have social media. Is there any place that you're particularly busy in terms of social media

Steven (55:39):
Between probably mostly Facebook and Instagram And you can find us there, Villa Capelli. I'll misspell it out just real quickly. V I L L A C A P P E L L I. So double confidence in both words. And then we're where you find us everywhere.

Drew (56:01):
All right. Well good. And I will post all of the links to your sites and your social media out on the show notes page too. So everybody should be able to get out there and check you guys out and hopefully get inspired to head to that area and see a part of Italy that probably doesn't get talked about as much, but we need to stretch ourselves and see some places that we haven't seen before. And the best part being that we won't be bumping into a lot of tourists. Right.

Paul (56:30):
And if you love great food and it's actually quite less expensive than the rest of Italy, you're going to love it. And the weather's always great.

Drew (56:43):
Fantastic. Well, thank you so much for being on the show and spreading a little bit of knowledge about that part of Italy and what you guys are doing. You're a lot of fun talk to, and I wish you guys a lot of success.

Paul (56:56):
Thank you very, very much. Thank you so much. Thanks for having us.

Drew (56:59):
Well, thanks everybody for listening to another week of Travel Fuels Life. And head over to our show notesPage@travelfuelslife.com slash podcasts. Look for episode number 19, and you will find some bonus coverage. There's a video out there where we have a little bit more of our discussion, this one on a Taste of Southern Italy, so check that out. We also have links to Villa Capelli and some of the other stuff that we talked about on the show. So make sure you head out there to travel fuels life.com/podcasts.

(57:33):
Wine, your thing, or Whiskey. Well, if whiskey is your thing, I actually have something coming up just for you, and especially if you like Whiskey History and Travel. It's a new podcast called Whiskey Lore, and the idea of this one is a little bit different. This one's going to be more of a binge worthy podcast. A lot of episodes coming at you all at once, and I'm chasing whiskey stories and learning a whole lot of stuff on my travels. And I'm going to bring to your favorite podcast app this show Whiskey Lore coming up very, very soon. And so if you want to find out when that gets released, just follow us on facebook.com/whiskey, and then you'll be able to see pictures of my whiskey travels in Scotland, Ireland in the us, and then be alerted when the new podcast comes out. I am really excited about this. I think you're going to like it. And until next time, have yourself a great week. Safe travels. Thanks for listening to Travel Fuels Life.