Zingaro National Park
Mike and I love a good national park. Although we’re interested in culture and history what got us really excited about travelling through Europe was the amazing natural beauty that we were going to experience. Our travels through Ireland were spent walking through woods in the rain…
hiking up mountains with spectacular views…
and blissfully stumbling through bogs to get to places like this…
So understand that when I say Zingaro National Park is spectacular know that my bar has been set pretty high. There are several walking trails and we took the coastal route so of course there were the obligatory pebble beaches and spectacular coastal views with the clearest of waters that we have come to expect of Italy’s coast.
Curiously there were charming, sometimes dilapidated buildings throughout the park. Some were being used to display local crafts or house exhibits on the local fauna and flora but others just looked abandoned. Thankfully most of the human-made additions to the park were very much in keeping with the natural environment and only added to its beauty.
We were surprised by the lushness of the vegetation and the diversity of plants. Up until our visit to Zingaro, our experience of Italian flora has been of arid, desert like landscapes of cacti and dry scrub or agricultural fields of olive trees or vineyards. Zingaro had the expected cacti and spiky plants but it also had a ground-cover of thick lush clover that you’d expect to see in Ireland, wild fennel everywhere, and is apparently home to over 25 species of orchards. Basically, there was a lot of green stuff.
In conclusion, it was pretty.
P.S. Most photo credits go to my very talented partner Mike.
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