We had a wonderful breakfast at the Palazzo dei Dondoli.
John was sure that one of the women running the hotel was really Tina Fey in disguise.
We packed up, and they called us a cab to take us to Alamo Car Rental. It was surprisingly not cheap for such a short ride, but I guess that I because they pick you up. The people at Maggiore, the car rental agency that handles Alamo and National in Lecce, were quite pleasant and spoke a bit of English. I set up our new GPS, with maps of Italy and Greece as well as North America, and soon enough we were off. Our plan for today was to explore some of the parts of Puglia north of Salento.
Our first stop of the day was Locorotondo. This is supposedly one of the most beautiful towns in Italy, and is famed for its white buildings and paving stones. That was not our first impression of it. The newer part of the city has that drab, functional, concrete architecture that you find all over the developing world. My guess is that most of this went up in the 1950’s and 1960’s when southern Italy was much poorer than it is today. We did not want to deal with parking in the old part of the city with narrow alleys and one-way streets, so we parked about a kilometer away and walked in.
The centro storico is indeed filled with white-washed buildings and flowers. It is pretty, but nothing special compared to many similar kinds of towns in Greece or Spain.
We walked around for a bit, but as it was the midday siesta, absolutely NOTHING was open other than a few restaurants, and neither of us felt much like eating. The streets were deserted with only a few tourists like us wandering about. Apparently a couple of the churches are historically significant, but they were tightly locked as well. I guess nobody prays at midday, either. Just about the only street life we saw were two dogs. They seemed bored, too.
We pushed on towards Alberobello. We figured we would stop by our lodging first and get settled before we went into the town. It was not completely easy to find the Fontana Vecchia Bed and Breakfast. It is not located in town, but a few kilometers outside of Alberobello. I picked it because it features the trulli architecture traditional to this part of northern Puglia. You can tell the trulli in the picture of the hotel below from the conical stone roofs. Looking at the picture, can you also figure why John immediately decided he liked this bed and breakfast?
Dozens of fruits trees are found on the property. John is very fond of cherries, and these were perfectly ripe and sweet.
Our hosts here are a really sweet couple. They have a small dog. He was not enjoying his bath.
Trulli are not very big, even if they are cute. John discovered this the hard way.
After swimming a bit and napping by the pool, we decided to go into town. Here’s the proud driver with our rental car.
No, that really is not our car. They gave us a big Volvo because neither of us wanted to deal with driving a stick and figuring out the roads in a foreign country. The only automatic transmissions they have come in full size vehicles. Still this old Citröen is kind of cute.
The town center of Alberobello is a UNESCO site. There are two hillsides covered with trulli. Although they seem cute to us, the trulli were housing for the desperately poor. They had no electricity or running water and the sanitation was primitive at best. It is not surprising that the residents were eager to move into new apartments when they had the chance.
But the unique architecture of the trulli made people understand that they were worth preserving. Some of these, like this one below, are still used as dwellings. They have been updated to include modern necessities including television.
Far more have been converted to shops and restaurants.
There are flowers everywhere in this old part of town.
We went into the slightly newer area across the street and had two cheap - and almost inedible - sandwiches. John found some of the people on the street interesting to watch. He thought this woman could be in a Fellini film.
Tomorrow we are off to the mountains of Abruzzo before heading in The Marches.
