Truilli Houses, Vino and cultural surprises!

---

I know I have been less then prompt with some of my posts, trust me we have been so busy trying to fit everything in that sometimes it is a little difficult to sit by the computer. Of course the amounts of wine we have been drinking and the beautiful villa may have something to do with it as well. This truly is an oasis even if it is surrounded by some unruly folks at times.

Today we had the Truilli of Alberobello on the agenda. This area which is about 45 minutes from our villa is the only real tourist trap we decided to take in. Our caretaker warned us there would be bus loads of tourists and once again she did not steer us wrong.

First a little history on the Trulli these are homes that cannot be described with out using the word gnome or keebler elf in the same sentence. As our caretaker Bettina describes to build this type of home you must hire a trullaro for the work and the good ones that have learned the trade over time are hard to find. Homes have pointy roofs, very few windows and are made of stone they are designed to keep cool temperatures in .

We headed out to Alberobello through the long winding streets. Today our trip would take us through a town called Locorotundo and true to it's name it was crazy circles. Our GPS guide basically gave up after the third of fourth time around the town I think at this point she was saying you crazy americans find your on damn way out of here. It took us sometime but we made our way out of this madhouse. We were happy to start seeing the gnome houses although there are trulli's spread all over this region this was the highest concentrated area. As we expected it was also the most concentrated area of tourists in funny hats walking behind someone carrying a big sign with a number on it. We all agreed this would probably be our worst nightmare. We headed up the small streets and saw street after street of trulli's selling the same tourist trinkets in each one. We quickly decided it was time for some vino!

We opened the trusty lonely planet to find a nice place to stop. Of course in Italy when you find somewhere you never know if it will be open. It seems that the locals only work about two days a week and they are different every week, finding a glass of vino could take three to four stops. Our first stop, resulted in locked
doors. Just as we were about to head back towards Ostuni we saw a sign for a little restaurant in a trulli. We arrived and we were the only guests. We had a delightful lunch of pasta and vino.

Having accomplished our first goal we headed back to Locorotundo, I know we are crazy but Laura told us there was a good winery there that we could get free samples! Did some body said Vino? ..........yeah load back into the travel mobile and ride in circles until we find our destination. Off we go. It didn't take us too long to find the establishment maybe we are developing a keen sense of smell for wine. When we pulled up to the winery there was a very large tourist bus but we figured hey where here and there is free Vino, we will just wait out the tourist crowd. The good news was that since the workers were busy with this large group we had a lot more wine that we probably were supposed to for the 1 euro fee.

When we walked in it looked more like a modern warehouse full of wines then an old winery. Some wine was put in boxes for sale that held 20 liters each. I thought gosh that may last at least one weekend with my friends back at The Manhattan. We saw a small folding table set out with some bottles and a sign that said 1euro tasting. Sign us up we all said, the somelier knew no English neither did anyone else in the entire warehouse. We started sampling all the different wines and then the tour group showed up from the bowels of the building. We all expected to see another elderly group but low and behold this was a middle school class tour. Can you just imagine the permission slips this would take in the US. Not even to think about the parents that would keep their children out of school that day or have them wear a big sign with a cross over the grapes for those allergic to grapes or any by product of such.

As we were waiting to make some purchases we watched the children and their teachers milling around. We were expecting them to ask a few questions and head back to their bus. Not so in Italy, it appears in Italy when you are in middle school and you go on a field trip to a winery you bring back lots of souveniors for your family. So as they started making their purchases we helped ourselves to more wine.

We were amazed that children not only could purchase alcohol but that they could bring it on the bus with all the other children. We wondered how many empties would be lying on the floor of the bus when they made it to their final destination. I would certainly not have wanted to be one of the chaperones for this class trip.

After the warehouse settled down we proceeded to make our purchases which had grown over time either because the wine tested better over time or we had just lost our taste do to the amount of "free samples" we had consumed.

Thankfully Rich did a good job controlling himself so we all pilled back into the van and headed back to the villa for our mid day siesta. We headed back into town for some light dinner and retired fairly early. Who knew touring through Italy would wear us all out.

PS.. I have elected to post with out pictures for now I will add as time permits.

Ciao

---

Photos

Wine
Boxed Wine in Italy ?

Laura
Is anyone looking ?