September in Puglia (Week 3 - Bari to Lecce)

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Sunday, 14 September – Bari to Martina Franca

After a short drive along the coast south from Bari, we arrived in Polignano a Mare, another medieval white city perched on a jagged cliff top pockmarked with caverns and grottoes. The historic centre is a succession of narrow streets and alleyways of bright white houses and churches. There is a rocky beach splitting the town, and sandy beaches either side. The rocky beach is a deep ravine squeezed between two small cliffs. We walked into the quaint old town, a space inhabited by a succession of invaders from the Huns to the Normans. There are touristy gift shops and shops selling olive oil. It is a thriving holiday destination and all the shops are open on Sunday and do not close for the four hour mid-afternoon siesta. We sauntered in our usual haphazard and improvised manner. We stopped for a coffee where the back wall was covered with a portrait of the American writer Charles Bukowski made entirely from beer bottle caps (appropriate considering his dispensation to drink). The cafe macchiato was strong and the chocolate muffin very chocolaty!

I went into a newsagent to ask about a series of jazz cds that had been distributed with a local newspaper in August. I have managed to get two of the five so far and I ask in the newsagents as we walk by them. The lady informed me that the series was ‘tutto finito’: all finished! I had heard this a dozen times so far but haven’t yet given up hope of finding the other three cds in the set. I then asked her if she could direct me to the record store on Via Vittorio Emmanuel and showed her my note with the name of the store, its address and the name of the town. She took the paper and studied what I had written there for a moment and declared: ‘No Polignano! Putignano.’ She pointed at the floor and proclaimed ‘Polignano’ then pointed out the door to the west and advised ‘Putignano’.

Polignano is also famous as the place where the famous song ‘Volare’ was conceived and written. A large statue commemorating the singer from Polignano, Domenico Mondungo, who also co-wrote the song, stands in a seaside piazza. Winning the 8th Sanremo Music Festival, the song was chosen as the Italian entry to the Eurovision Song Contest in 1958, where it won third place out of ten songs in total. The combined sales of all the versions of the song exceed 22 million copies worldwide, making it one of the most popular Eurovision songs of all time and the most successful Sanremo Music Festival song ever. It spent five non-consecutive weeks atop the Billboard Hot 100 in August and September 1958 (also renowned as the birth month of this American-Irish blogger!) and was Billboard's number-one single for the year. Modugno's recording subsequently became the first Grammy winner for Record of the Year and Song of the Year in 1958. The statue was surrounded by groups of Italian tourists all humming the melody and singing the lyrics softly to themselves!

Another short drive brought us into the Valle d’Itria area of Italy and specifically to the town of Alberobello, a UNESCO World Heritage site of over 1400 ‘Trulli’ houses. Trulli’s are the iconic dry-stone houses built of overlapping limestone slabs, white-washed base and cone-shaped roof with pinnacles of various shapes and symbols. While the town is a major tourist destination, the houses are spread out and we often had whole streetscapes to ourselves during our visit. The houses themselves exude charm. They are as magical as if from a fairytale land of gnomes and leprechauns. I took so many photos the battery on the camera expired.

There are over 3000 of these houses in this area and we slowed to look at them as we drove both to Alberobello and then away from it on to Martina Franca. Some were in desperate need of repair while others glistened bright white in the strong afternoon sunshine. The near-derelict trellis can be purchased for as little as 25 thousand Euro, and although Joan loved these cute little houses she was not tempted!

Martina Franca was buzzing with activity. We tried to locate and contact a couple self-catering apartments in the town centre. While we were parked outside one of them, contemplating what to try next as there was no answer to the doorbell and we hadn’t a phone number, a young woman approached us and offered her assistance. She was a friend of the owner of the apartment. She rang her friend and learned that she was out of town and therefore would not be able to accommodate us. The large city centre hotel listed available rooms on Booking.com; we drove there and Joan negotiated a ten Euro reduction on the website price. It was a bit more than we usually allow for accommodation, but it was my birthday ... so we splurged! And we were very glad that we did. No sooner we were checked in and unpacking in the room then a round of fireworks crashed and lit up the skyline in welcome!

The hotel receptionist advised us that there was a food fair happening on a small square about 200 meters away and we went there to walk among the residents of Martina Franca. And they were all there: every single one of them! We purchased twenty Euro work of tokens and traded them for a cone of sausages, a crepe with melted pecorino cheese, two porchetta paninis and two Peroni beers in large plastic cups. We listed to a jazz band in a pavilion in the park warm up and do their sound check. They played the Ellington/Strayhorn standard ‘Caravan’ and a Latin number and they disappeared into the crowd and we didn’t see them on the stage again.

The streets around the park and food fair were closed to traffic and we slow-crawled with the rest of the festival goers up into the old town and along the length of its main corso. It was like leaving an large arena music or sporting event; everyone moving along at the same slow but steady pace. We reached them culmination of the shiny marble stone sidewalk, turned around and slow-crawled back to the hotel. The food stalls were still thriving. On the music pavilion was a man singing to recorded backing track; there was no sign of the jazz quintet.

Monday, 15 September – Martina Franca to Ceglie Messapica

We began this morning in Martina Franca by retracing our route of yesterday evening. We walked through the small park where the food stalls were being dismantled and the music pavilion had been stripped of its sound system. The thoroughfare was choked with morning traffic. There are three small bookshops on this street. We walked through the beautiful central piazza and then the magnificent arch into the old city where the paving stones shone in the morning light. They were immaculately clean, probably washed and waxed overnight after the revellers had retired to their homes. We visited a couple art galleries and shops selling olive oil, local pasta and confectionary. We also walked around the residential areas that surround the historic centre. The buildings here are much more ornate than in the middle of Italy with which we are more familiar. They are Baroque and Roccoco in style, with cherubs and seashells adorning entranceways. Most of the old residential buildings, usually about four floors, have either stone or wrought iron balconies. These back streets were abandoned except for the odd elderly lady leaning over the parapet of her balcony surveying her domain.

We returned to the hotel where we had left Thelonious MG parked and fully re-packed and after working our way through the morning traffic and one-way street system we continued our journey south through the Trulli-rich Valle d’Itria to Ceglia Messapica, only 18 kilometres away. A friend of a friend (and now our own new budding friend) who is a ‘foodie’ highly recommended a restaurant in this town, which immediately made it a ‘must stop’ destination for us. We arrived in the town a few minutes before 1pm and rushed to the tourist office at the entrance to the old city, as is our normal practice, for a local map and recommendations. The attendant had little English but offered maps of Ceglia Messapica as well as a few of the other small towns nearby. He also offered brochures, most of which we had already collected. As it happened, the restaurant was only a couple hundred meters away. It was empty of patrons. Joan studied the menu and I utilized my new smart-phone to find accommodation for a few nights. Because there are so many small towns clustered in the Valle d’Itria, and because one of our local pamphlets stated ‘a high concentration of top restaurants and star chefs’ in Ceglia Messapica, we had decided to centre ourselves in the town and create circular day trips from it.

I located three small self-catering apartments within 5 kilometres of Ceglia Messapica that stated availability and within our price range and started phoning them. The first one had no availability; the second one offered to phone me back in fifteen minutes; the third one kept telling me to visit their website (which I had already done). None of them seemed to be interested in accommodating us at short notice and/or short term.

We were sitting on the stone steps opposite the restaurant entrance. We watched a few couples and small groups of well-dressed Italians entering the restaurant. I visited the usual websites again and found another listing for a small apartment at a reasonable price that was located less than 400 meters from where we were sitting on the Booking.com website. Instead of phoning I made a reservation online and received an instant confirmation. We now had a place to sleep for the next three nights and it was time for lunch.

Cibus Restaurant was a series of white-painted and vaulted rooms, each of which contained half a dozen or so tables. We peeked into each room and chose one nearest the entrance (which we later discovered was the smoker’s room). The menu offers the usual pasta and meat dishes but also some dishes not so often offered, including rabbit, sheep entrails and horse meat. The jaded and unsmiling young waitress plonked the menus down in front of us and departed (enough said about her, except that she seemed tired and in need of a holiday). Our shared pasta starter was described on the menu as meaty with breadcrumbs, but it was more roux than ragu and the only clear taste was the pecorino cheese. Joan had the rabbit which was excellently cooked in a very flavoursome tomato sauce. I had a mixed grill that consisted of over-cooked pieces of lamb, pork and sausage and all were more dry than moist. The Italians have a tendency, as close readers will recall, of over-grilling their meats (that must be the way they prefer it) and this restaurant was no exception. The mixed grill was served with a wonderful large baked potato, the first one we have seen since we were in Ireland, and we demolished it with eager relish. We also polished off a bottle of the local rose with the meal. For us, Cibus was a very ordinary meal in extraordinary rooms.

After dinner we walked around the town more and found it absolutely deserted; there wasn’t an Italian sinner to be found anywhere. We visited the courtyard of the local Norman castle, built again by the Celtic-Tiger equivalent of the 12^th Century, Frederick II. And we found a small square sign there for the local jazz club. (Greg was very excited, sceptical but hopeful.) The castle was closed to visitors during the afternoon siesta.

We walked to the apartment. A woman was sitting on the balcony above the doorway numbered 22. She was muttering to herself. We tried to ask her if this was the correct location but she did not understand us. We sat on the marble stairway and rang Francesco. He apologised that he could not meet us until after finishing work as he was in Brindisi and we had made the reservation at very short notice. We arranged to meet him at 6:30.

We walked back to the car and Joan had a mini-siesta while I had a coffee and read for an hour at a nearby cafe. There was only one route into the small square where the apartment was located and it was easier to find on foot than driving. We drove around and around the uneven stone roads in search of the entrance, each time getting a little bit closer until we lucked upon the right road. There was parking directly in front of the house. Francesco arrived promptly at 6:30 and let us in.

The apartment is all white: walls and vaulted ceilings, with lovely tile floors. It seems like a former family home now vacated. It has three large rooms: a kitchen cum dining room cum sitting room with coach bed; the entranceway is another quite large sitting room with a comfortable couch; and the bedroom is also large with a muslin-curtain four-poster bed. It was very clean and quiet with very very thick walls. We unpacked and settled in, checked the internet for emails, and went back into the town for an early evening promenade. The small central piazza was now full of people, both young and old, and two traffic police monitoring the cars coming through the now pedestrian-only square. We visited the castle again and it was partly open. There was an art exhibition in three of its rooms. After a quick walk through the rooms, we asked the attendant about the jazz club. He was a local bass player, electric and acoustic, who played jazz, but modern. He said the jazz club was closed because there were some structural problems with the part of the castle where it was located. We asked if we might find some live jazz in the town or one of the towns nearby, but he couldn’t think of any.

We returned to the apartment and worked on the blog and read a bit and listened to the news Italian jazz cds I had purchased in Bari a few days ago.

Tuesday, 16 September – Ostuni – Fasano – Locorotondo – Cisternino

Today we planned a roughly triangular route through the Valle d’Itria to visit four small towns: Ostuni, Fasano, Locootondo and Cisternino.
Perched atop three adjoining hills, Ostuni is a small city with three names: the White City, the Queen of the Olive Trees, and the City of the Nativity Scene. From a distance, its whiteness shines brightly in the morning sun. We entered into its centro storico and walked its narrow streets. With a population of about 35,000 persons, it supports 16 churches and a cathedral. It is at the end of the Trulli region and the beginning of the hotter and dryer Salento peninsula (aka as the heel of Italy). There are a couple of viewpoints from which it is possible to view the sea, and even more dramatically there are olive trees stretching from the base of the town all the way to the water and also to the north and south as far as the eye can see. I picked up a brochure in the tourist office listing its summer events and festivals. For six weeks, from the 17^th of July until the end of August, the brochure listed a multitude of daily events that included theatre and folklore, pop music, folk music and opera, fitness performances (whatever that means), and an animated film festival. They even had a couple of jazz performances in addition to many evenings of the local folk music and dance called ‘Pizzica and Tarantella’. The town hosted the finals of the Miss Italia pageant contest in mid-August. The week before our visit a new three-day festival in September was premiered. Called ‘White City Country Festival’ is featured, according to the google translator: A Total Horse Rally with American Riding, a Cattle Market, Sport Riding (which I assume means barrel-racing) , Western Riding and Breeders Support (no idea what that entailed). We are sure sorry we missed this extravaganza as it sounds like great fun!
Our second stop for the day was in Fasano. On the road from Fasano to Montalbano there stands a Bronze Age Dolmen known as the Tavola dei Paladini. We have seen lots of dolmens in Ireland and drove on without stopping. Fasano is the home of the largest wildlife park in Italy. We drove by the entrance road but hunger directed us into the town in search of lunch instead. We drove around and around the town searching for a suitable venue. We stopped and Joan peeked into a couple of cafes but they were uninspiring. We were at the point of driving on when we lucked onto Caffee Bella Napoli, a Cafeteria/Ice Cream Parlour/Tea Room/Restaurant/Wine Bar on the Piazza Ciaia. A few of the well-dressed local business men and women were dining on the patio out front. We parked Thelonious MG directly outside and joined them. We were presented with a lovely basket of bread and spears of crunchy carrot and cucumber when we sat down. The waiter spoke a little English and was charming and helpful. We shared a delicious local pasta dish with bacon pieces that resembled a stylish carbonarra, beautifully presented and the other was a gnocchi in a cream cheese sauce topped with fried leaks. This was a serious restaurant serving creative and excellent food and we were very lucky to have stumbled onto it!

After lunch we drove on to Locorotondo. Locorotondo is a pretty little hilltop town, the evocative name, which mean ‘round place’ anticipates the round conformation of its historical centre of concentric streets, low houses with the typical pointed gabled-roofs and whitewashed, originally built to fight against the sun. We missed both of their main festivals, a jazz festival in July and a flower festival in August, although some of the balconies had retained their colourful arrangements into September. It has received an ‘Orange flag’ seal of tourism and environmental quality, which means it is distinguished by a unique, historical-cultural centre that is architecturally well-preserved. And the Lonely Planet guidebook claims it as one of the most beautiful towns in Italy and it was certainly very pretty and pleasant to walk around.

The final village on our near circular route was Cisternino. Cisternino is another in a set of very cute and very white, small hill top towns. In its central plaza stands a beautiful clock tower and in the heart of its historic centre an equally imposing quadrangular Norman tower.

With the exception of the Christian churches, these white-washed small towns remind us some of the small and equally-white small towns we have visited in Morocco. The guidebooks and internet sites compare them to Greek towns but as we not yet been there we don’t have that personal point of reference.

While driving between these four small towns in the Valle d’Itria we passed numerous Trulli houses, some abandoned, derelict and in disrepair and others with clusters of fresh white-painted domes. Each additional room gets its own pointed dome and no two domes are exactly the same dimension. The roads were olive orchard and vineyards. There is a major problem with an abundance of litter and waste scarring the roadways of southern Italy, but other than that it was like driving through history.

Wednesday, 17 September – Brindisi

Today we drove directly to Brindisi in the morning. Brindisi is the town at the end of the ancient Roman road, the via Appia. It was the route for legionnaires and pilgrims, crusaders and traders heading to Greece. Ferry boats still depart regularly for Greece from here, and in the afternoon while relaxing on the beach we saw one making its slow journey eastward (a journey we are now considering for the future). The port of Brindisi is the logistical base for the first aid and humanitarian missions of the United Nations. Overlooking the inner harbour is a grandiloquent memorial in the shape of a ship’s hull. It was originally built at the peak of Mussolini’s Fascist regime in 1933 and it was a little unsettling seeing his name writ bold alongside the Fascist symbols of the era. It has since been redefined as a monument that bears the names of the 36,000 Italians lost at sea during World War I and WWII.

The guide books and internet websites we used before going to Brindisi suggested that this port town was a slight bit seedy, but they are quite out of date because this small town is anything but sleazy. It considers itself a ‘city of welcome’ and it is spotlessly clean and the stone street slabs glow in the sunshine. We felt a warm and friendly and balmy atmosphere here. The main shopping area, particularly Corso Garibaldi is palm-lined and slow-paced and relaxed. The street links the train station to the seafront, which is undergoing major construction in the creation of a wide marbled promenade extending from the cruise ship dock. The town was full of well-heeled Brits, many very elderly, from the cruise liner. The tourist office was located at the end of the dock and had a free wifi point where many of the staff and customers of the ship were contacting family and friends back home. It also provided a selection of maps, one an historical city tour of their fifteen churches and museums, palazzos and piazzas and another which offered a historical time line of events and happenings in the city.

Brindisi is a university town, as well as being a major naval and industrial port, and our pre-arrival research suggested a music store called Quincy might stock a reasonable range of Italian jazz music. We arrived just as a young man was locking the door. We peeked inside and the store appeared to be undergoing renovation. The man informed us that the store was now closed and a ‘work in progress’ to turn it into a music pub.

We browsed in the local bookstore, which did not close for lunch, and Joan purchased a beautiful art-cookbook on the cuisine of Puglia. We asked the attendant there for a recommendation for lunch and he suggested La Botteghino, which he called a type of Italian fast food but very good. He also recommended the restaurants at the harbour, and Joan had inspected the menu and pre-approved one there so that was where we headed. We walked an alternative route and happened upon La Bottenghino. It was a small cafeteria-style restaurant serving a couple freshly-made pasta dishes and salads. There were half a dozen people standing at the counter waiting patiently. Joan studied the dishes and we decided to try it. Joan’s pasta of Orichettee was made with rabe broccoli and anchovies which is a traditional local dish and I had a pasta with bacon pieces. We shared a small plate of sausage meat rolled in zucchini. We washed it down with a cold local lager, Dreher. Total cost: 18 Euro. It was a great local meal. By the time we had finished, the room was full, the tables on the sidewalk were full, and there was a line of people waiting that extended to the doorway.

After lunch we drove around the harbour to a beach and Joan topped up her tan and I read and snoozed in the car. We drove back via a more southerly route, slowing through the centres of Latiano, Francavilla and Grottaglie, but their late afternoon heavy traffic and our own tiredness caused us to drive through without stopping.

Back in Ceglie Messapica, dinner was a very traditional Puglian meal at Osteria del Capitolo di Barletta Nicola which was recommended by Francesco, the owner of the apartment where we were staying. There was no menu. We were the first people in the restaurant (and I admit to being a bit reluctant). In halting English the offerings were explained to us. Joan ordered one anti-pasta dish, one pasta dish and one meat dish (avoiding the horse meat) – for us to share. We were served an enormous amount of food: the anti-pasta offering consisted of four kinds of cheeses, four cold meats, tomatoes, zucchini, and a basket of mussels together with a small bowl of meatballs, mashed potato and spinach. The bread served with it was crispy crust and soft centre. The pasta was a short local noodle in a spicy sauce. The meat was pork. It was all excellent. A family run restaurant, grandpa lorded over the dining room with one eye on the television set, grandma and ma were cooking, daughter and a very very tall man who didn’t look like family but could have been a cousin, were the wait staff. We were given lemoncello as an after dinner drink and a warm and friendly ‘ciao, grazie’ when we left. With a deep jug of the local red wine and a large bottle of sparking water, the bill totalled 38 Euro. A wonderful local ‘cucina povera’ dining experience!

Thursday, 18 September – Ceglie Messapica to Lecce

We checked out of Francesco’s grand-mother’s house in Ceglie Messapica at 10am. We had a nice chat with Francesco before leaving. He works in food promotion for the area. We had made arrangements to meet with Simone in Lecce between 4 and 5 at her holiday rental apartment there, so we drove very slowly east and south.

We stopped in Mesagne and walked around the small historic old centre. I noticed a few Old American West-type ‘Wanted: Dead or Alive’ advertising posters that seem very out of character for a small town in southern Italy (but then maybe there is a lot similar between the old wild west and contemporary southern Italy). Later that day I discovered this article on a local news website: MESAGNE, 18 SEPT – An anti-mafia operation was conducted this morning by the men of Dia of Lecce in the provinces of Brindisi, Bari and Pavia have executed an arrest warrant against 16 people, some of which are considered members mafia-type organization Sacra corona Unita. Among those arrested include, among others, a boss, three businessmen of Mesa and a former councilor of the same city.

We stopped in a Cantina and purchased a bottle of local red wine and a sweet desert wine from a young woman with good English and a longing to go to Ireland.

We drove slowly southward. Plumes of smoke rose from among the groves of olive trees and the pleasant smell of burning wood filled their air as the trimmings from the trees was being burned off. Olive groves border both sides of the road nearly everywhere we drive here in lower area of Puglia. They seem to carpet Puglia. There are reportedly over 60 million olive trees here. Some of the trees are hundreds of years old, with knotted, gnarled, robust and immensely-thick trunks that have been twisted into grotesque, arthritic shapes by time, wind, sun and man.

A friend has pointed out that these ancient olive groves are being threatened by a bacteria. We also read a recent article in the UK’s Guardian newspaper about the problem. The insect-born bacterium, which originated in America, has already infected nearly half a million trees. Apparently the trees dry out and die, looking like they have been burned. Strong pesticides are being used to halt the insects that spread the bacteria. The disease has spread across the bottom half o Puglia, mostly south of Lecce, and we have not seen any examples of it as we have yet to reach the far south of the heel. We have only seen perfectly manicured groves stretching in all directions all the way to the sea. One Italian health official described Puglia as ‘one big olive grove’ and that it certainly is!

We turned off the main road to drive through the town centres of San Donaci and Salice Salentino. We were hoping to find a cute little place for lunch, as we had another day in Fasano, but both the towns were very disappointing, a series of very pock-marked streets (Some of the roads in this part of Italy as bad as any we have driven ourselves or traveled on, including the Caribbean and South America) and depressed housing. We didn’t pass one open cafe or restaurant in either town. We drove into Lecce and found ourselves with the opportunity to park for free at a large park in the city centre. We walked around a little, searching again for a restaurant, and instead found a local supermarket. We purchased some meat and cheese and a freshly-baked roll and had a picnic in the park on a bench. Nearby benches sat a few Indian traders or courting couples. We hung out there until just after 4 pm when we allowed the GPS on our smart-phone to guide us to Simone’s apartment.

We unpacked and settled into the apartment. I had a restful siesta while Joan caught up on her emails and internet news reading. We walked into the old city around 7pm. Lecce is a major tourist destination. Because of the many Baroque-era churches packed into the maze of its historical centre streets, Lecce is the ‘Florence of the South’. They feature elaborately carved facades and interiors that erupt with symphonies of angels, cherubs, saints, saviors and Madonnas. They are magnificently lit in the evening. Our evening meander took us passed many of them. In the courtyard of the Duomo a newly married couple in their wedding finery posed for photographs.

Our destination was a restaurant called Volo that had been recommended to us by a friend-of-a-friend. With the too convenient help from the GPS on the new smart-phone., we easily found the restaurant. (I hate relying on the GPS and am concerned that my map-reading skills will deteriorate vanish soon as a result of too much reliance on technology. The map-reading skills represent a significant investment by the United States government in me. They sent me to Alabama where in addition to map-reading I was instructed in the fine arts of how to dig a fox-hole and how to ‘kill the enemy’!) The restaurant was empty but it was still early in the evening. It passed Joan’s menu inspection. The restaurant looked a bit formal, and we weren’t really hungry enough for a big dinner so we decided instead to return the next day for lunch. We continued our meander with no particular direction or other destination in mind. We had no map and we turned off the smart-phone and just wandered.

We stopped to listen to a man playing a piano in a square in front of one of the magnificent baroque cathedrals. A regular procession of visitors and students slowly walked the streets. There were many young people as Lecce supports a large university. It is also the first town in which we have noticed large groups of Japanese visitors. The large and steady influx of tourists attracts the African street vendors who sell their knock-off brand items on blankets spread on the ground.

At 9:25 we happened upon the main tourist office which is probably the most beautiful tourist office building in Italy if not in the world. It is located on Piazza Sant’Oronzo, just behind the arcaded amphitheatre in which, during Roman times, some 20,000 spectators would fill the stone seats. A woman was standing behind the counter and the office was lit up and the door open. A quick check on the timetable on the doorway stated that they closed at 9:30. I quickly entered and exclaimed ‘Buona Sera’, a custom when entering any Italian premise, and announced that I only required a map of Lecce city. Every tourist office in Italy that we have visited so far has a pad of these they give our freely to anyone who asks. This woman said she was closed and couldn’t give me a map, even though they were sitting on the counter in front of her. We had a short discussion about maps and closing times and responsibility and the maps on the counter but she was stubborn and adamant and I left without any map of Lecce!

We had now worked up an appetite and we had a doughy pizza for our dinner at Il Quinto Pizze e Delizie. The outdoor tables were in a narrow alleyway just off one of the major promenade routes and we could people-watch while enjoying the very good pizza.

Friday, 19 September – Lecce

The historic centre of Lecce is a beautifully ornate baroque town, a glorious architectural confection of churches and palazzos intricately and extravagantly sculpted from the soft local sandstone. It is also a small modern city with upmarket brand boutiques, fashionable modern wine bars, antique shops and furniture restorers. A very lively city, Lecce is full of university students and visitors of all persuasions from coach loads of tourists following guides with raised umbrellas to honeymooning couples. Lecce is known both as ‘the Florence of the South’ and ‘the Athens of Apulia’. H.V. Morton calls these labels ‘well meaning compliments which, however, do not mean very much’. During a period of prosperity and extraordinary economic and commercial activity at the end of the 17^th and beginning of the 18^th centuries, Lecce was rebuilt in the fashionable style of the time, Baroque. It was once a despised style in Italy, then later and remains much prized and admired. Elaborate decorations and cherubs extravagantly cover facades and doorways. The town's great artistic treasure and attribute is its architecture. As is our custom, we wandered and rambled down the stone streets, dodging gangs of tourists and locals on bicycles, stopping to dawdle and gaze upwards at the strange and marvellous sites.

We stopped at a bustling cafe on the Piazza Sant’Oronzo for our ‘elevenses’ of strong coffee and sweet pastry, which was served slightly warmed, and watched the passing human parade. The remains of a Roman Amphitheatre, sunken below the level of the modern city, has been excavated and occupies much of this large central plaza. We found another tourist office with friendlier staff who provided us with a couple maps of the city and high-lighted the most important sites and offered an afternoon guided tour of them.

We happened upon a wedding in one of the churches. We entered the church with dozens of other curious and gawking visitors. Except for the bride, most of the attendees wore black, including many of the women. Although we could see a bride and groom kneeling before the priest at the front of the church, it felt more like a funeral than wedding. Even the music from the organ player was more dirge-like than celebratory. Joan wondered if it was a ‘mafia wedding’. I suggested I clap my hands loudly together to see if they ducked for cover!

One of the questions answered for us at the tourist office was the location of music stores; they marked two: one in the historical centre and the other in the modern commercial district behind the castle. We found the historical centre music shop very easily. In fact, we had walked passed it last evening. It had been closed but its window display of head-banging music did not encourage me to return today. The loud and obnoxious music was blasting away and the store was empty; tourists walked hurriedly passed. I ventured into it anyway for a brief browse. The store attendant, who was standing outside his empty store smoking a cigarette, extinguished the cancer-stick and followed me in. A quick glance at the racks informed me that there was no jazz here! There was, however, one column of the local folk music, Taranta. I picked up one of these compilations and was reading the track listing on the back. The attendant came over to me and haltingly offered his few words of encouragement: ‘very good local music ... all local music ... very good’. I gestured if he could put it on his sound system to listen. He did so and played thirty second snippets of the first half dozen songs. It sounded interesting, not only to me but also to other people walking by the store. Almost immediately the store was filled with browsing potential customers and the store attendant was very busy answering questions and ringing up sales. I had to push through to ask him to move the song onto the next track. Joan came into the store and listened to a couple of tracks and we decided to purchase the 2cd compilation. It was lively and energetic music, good for driving with the roof retracted through the olive orchards. It took us a few minutes to work our way back to the cash register to purchase the cd and I thought is it any wonder retail businesses in Italy are struggling! Not only do they close for four hours in the afternoon, when they are open they seem to make a determined effort to repel customers!

Another destination was the Lecce cooking school The Awaiting Table. We had written down the address from their current website, which appeared up to date as it mentioned an anniversary this month, but when we arrived at the address the building was shuttered closed and peeking through into the courtyard it seemed as if it was undergoing renovation work.

Our next stop was a store called La Lupa that sold local products, including olive oil, wine and the local hard biscuits. A very friendly and helpful woman with no English at all gave us some oil to taste and then some red wine. She talked to Joan non-stop and Joan could pick out enough words to mostly understand what she was saying. We purchased a bottle of olive oil, a red wine and a desert wine.

Upon leaving we asked the woman where she would recommend for lunch. She pointed us to Locanada Rivoli, less than one hundred metres further along the street. It defined itself as a ‘Cucina Tipica’ but it was a disappointment. The food was basic and edible, adequate; we were hoping for something better. It was a family run restaurant that was just churning out mediocre food and that had seen way too many tourists during the summer and was now running on empty. The service was unsmiling. Joan had a melanzane and I had meatballs; both were covered in the same tomato sauce. Joan calls these restaurants ‘red sauce joints’ in which the same sauce is used for all the dishes. We noticed that all the diners were foreign visitors; there were no Italians eating here. We also noticed that the woman who seated people made couples who did not know each other share tables set for four and created an obvious discomfort and awkwardness for those couples.

Lecce, like Florence and Siena and Venice and Rome and even Orvieto, suffers from the blight of ‘too many tourists’ and therefore the service people tend to be worn out, jaded and distracted in attending to their customers. We have experienced this symptom in many tourist destinations, from Maine to Dublin; it is not unique to Italy.

One thing Lecce does have is a jazz club! Il Corto Maltese Jazz Club. The website announced a trio performing renditions of the American Songbook standards. I had sent them an email yesterday asking what time the music started and if they also served food or only drink, but received no reply. In one of the local brochures I had collected during the day there was a listing for the club stating that the music commenced at 10pm. After having an anti-pasta dinner at the apartment, we walked to the jazz club and arrived there around 9pm to find that it did indeed serve food, mostly anti-pasta plates of meat and cheese, thick-meat sandwiches and salads, and that the tables were reserved for diners. We were offered two tall stools at the bar, which was okay as it was right in front of the stage. Shortly after 10pm the three musicians – a keyboard player, a saxophonist doubling on flute, and a female singer – took up their positions and started. It was not very good; it was not awful but it was disappointing. Without drums or a bass the music had no drive. The girl singer’s diction was so poor that even when we knew the lyrics to the song she was singing we couldn’t understand what she was saying. The tenor sax-man was very restrained, even in his solos. And the keyboardist seemed to be just filling in space. There was, however, sometimes a fourth band member: the bar man playing his crushed-ice drinks machine. Most of the space in the club was taken up by a large U-shaped bar. The large window behind the stage and the door were both open and there were more people sitting and standing outside than inside. The clientele was very fashionable and trendy, expensive haircuts and t-shirts and sleeveless dresses. The staff couldn’t have been friendlier or more professional; they looked after us very well even though we were only there for the music. The Il Corto Maltese Jazz Club is not a real jazz club but a club with jazz. We left and walked back to the apartment at the end of the first set.

Saturday, 20 September – Lecce

Today we went shopping in the commercial heart of the new town. Sometimes you just need to forgo all the churches and cathedrals and all that ancient history for modern stores full of things to buy! The city centre of Lecce has a couple of large department store, including Coin and Zara, as well as any number of independent fashion outlets. It also has a music store. After elevenses of caffe macchiato and pastry, we split up for some serious shopping. Joan went her way and I went mine. Sometimes you just need a little alone me-time!

I went to YouMusic where I found there a respectable jazz selection that contained five Italian jazz cds that I required for my collection. Joan visited many of the clothes and shoe stores but only managed to purchase food stuff in the grocery store. We returned to the apartment for a lunch of thick porchetta steaks, mashed potato with onion and carrots.

We spent the early evening with one last walkabout of Lecce. The streets were chock full of people, local families with prams on their evening paseo, jovial groups of young people and visitors gazing at the well-lit churches. There were market stalls in abundance. The shops were open and we browsed in a couple of the bookstores, there are at least five here that we have noticed, and in another very nice store called Gustoliberrima which sold only products from Puglia. They had a vast range of goods on offer from books and music to wines and olive oils and crafts. It was a beautiful store. The air was still and humid and heavy and everybody seemed to move at a slow and relaxed pace: just the way life should be!

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