We had given up hope of finding a wine shop where I could make myself at home. Wine bars in the manner of those found in the USA aren’t in vogue here in Italy. We had resigned ourselves that such a place didn’t exist and so I had given up that ambition. Then the wine gods smiled upon us. A couple of weeks ago, our good friend Vincenzo suggested that we go get a pizza at a salumeria (Italian deli) that he liked. By sheer coincidence, our favorite grocer, Antonio had also told us of the same place. Antonio had words of praise for the owner’s wine collection. Serendipity smiled that day. It turned out that not only did this place have fabulous wines in stock, they make the very best pizza in all of ... read more

This means “a snack” in Italian. And in Italy and many other cultures, if it walked, ran, galloped, waddled, flew, burrowed, swam, etc. etc., it is fair game for eating. Well, I was recently introduced to the fine art of eating ricci or sea urchin; Italian style of course. Since I hadn’t ever eaten sea urchin, our good friend Vincenzo wouldn’t stand for this shortcoming in my life and insisted that I must have some ricci. So Vincenzo and Sara came over with a couple of dozen urchins in a plastic bag. Sea urchin can be found by diving for them or find them clinging to rocks in the shallows. According to Vincenzo, the best tasting ones are the ones in deeper water. It is too cold for diving this time of year and so we ... read more

I meant to post this earlier but forgot that I wrote it and didn't add it to the entries. Geezerdom is hard on a fella's memory! This is from two weekends ago. No photos on this one. I originally thought about titling this “When Bloggers Meet, Hilarity Ensues.” Beh, Friday night we went out to dinner with Jeff (inPuglia.Blogspot.com) to a restaurant that neither of us has eaten at. We dined at the ristorante Marco Aurelio and concluded that it was about 20-25 euro per person more than it actually was worth. It reminded me of a previous dining experience at a place called La Corniche. We did like the interior, but again it was another one of those brightly lit and the music doesn’t match the décor kind of places. I’m not saying that the ... read more

We had our first full weekend of actual socializing! Whew! What a relief! We have really been missing our social life with our friends. Culturally, it is difficult to integrate oneself into the social fabric of Italian life. One reason is that Italians are very much family centered. We also don’t work with many Italians and that further reduces our chances to get to know more people. Friday night we went out to dinner with a fellow ex-pat American. I ran across the website jeffinpuglia.blogspot.com during one of my internet surf sessions. Jeff lives in Brindisi and is an aerospace engineer. He has been in Italy for the last three years. Do go visit his site. I particularly like that he has provided links to information about Italy. There is a link that provides itineraries on ... read more

The Christmas break routine has been largely one of staying up late and sleeping in late. On some days we woke up with yen for a daytrip to go lunch somewhere different. We decided to combine that with a little sightseeing. We haven’t looked around the heel too much, so we went exploring. We headed south along the east coast of the Salentine Peninsula, this is the heel of Italy. We drove out of Brindisi and then took a left hand turn onto the first available road that would take us along the coast. We headed as far as Otranto on one of our expeditions. The drive wasn’t particularly beautiful or noteworthy. The little towns along the coast were largely ghost towns although I am quite sure that they are lively rocking towns during the summer. ... read more