Bari to Polignano a Mare

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Bari- to Polignao a Mare-- Backroads of Pulgia- In typical fashion, Ellen tried Gin and Tonic, Wine and then her first glass of Grappa, I then spent a good portion of the early morning hours becoming intimately famaliar with the bagno (particularly the toilet)- as I got rid of my poor choices for about 6 hours from both ends of my body! For those that have travelled with me, I seem to have this experience at least once every time I travel. I will say no more about that for now……………Bari is a Port City in the South of Italy. We stayed at the Bari Palace hotel—one of the nicer hotels in the town. We were there on Saturday night—and near the water, the place was absolutely swarming with locals out “strolling” and visiting with their friends. People seem to not spend their time closed up in their individual homes in Italy- they sit outside on their porches- or walk the nearby avenues to visit and catch up with the local news. We had a fabulous dinner at a restaurant recommened by a distant relative of Ed Ritelli—we basically let the maitre d’ bring us whatever was fresh—and it was wonderful. The next day at noon, we met our group at the Bari Train station. There are 14 of us in the group - a couple about our age from Montreal Canada, two other older couples and two 29 year old gals stuck with all us old foggies. We began our bike trip by travelling by bus to our first hotel- Il Melograno -- which was a Masseria (which is the term for a farm house—but these farm houses are more like castles/ or estates with orchards and fields of vegetables around them). The accomodations are beautiful—we had a large room with a little sitting area and a good sized bathroom. (pictures coming!) We then got “fitted” for our bikes and Jim’s seemed to fit just fine- Yeah! —we then took a warm up ride of almost 16 miles-- in the areas surrounding our hotel. We went past fields of lettace, parsley, eggplant, swiss chard, arugula, orange, lemon, lime, almond, and olive trees—it was beautiful and the weather was perfect—not too hot—which we all know makes me happy. We had a fantastic dinner at the hotel a multi course meal—where the anti-pasta (the food before the pasta course was more than any person would be able to eat for the entire meal LOTS of seafood!!) - we stuffed our selves and prepared for a big ride the next morning— to the seaside towns of Monopoli & Polignano a Mare!! For a few hills and a 29.2 mile ride!!

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