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Published: October 6th 2013
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(10/5/13: Hello, dear readers, this is your intrepid blogger, here. I'm sitting on our little terrace at our pensione in Praiano, while the others still sleep, trying to drown out the traffic noises by thinking back to sunnier days of our trip. I still have many adventures to blog about, and the weather looks like it will encourage me to do some catching up today. Very gray skies, rain and thunderstorms predicted for most of the rest of our trip, though the prediction of exactly when and how much seems to change every hour. I'm trying to focus on the positive, but this place is the first real disappointment of our of our trip, maybe just a reflection of the constant gray around us, and he fact at that there's 90 percent chance of thunderstorms tomorrow, on Dave's birthday to boot! Well, I won't go on with all this. Let me take you back a few days, when we were still in sunny Puglia...)
September 29, 2013
We planned on one free day to explore some more of the province of Puglia, so after a bit of research and talking with Silvestro and crew, we settled on the towns
of Martina Franca and Cisternino in the Val d'Itria area, where we hoped to see some of the iconic "trulli" structures, and Ostuni, one of the "white cities" of Puglia. After a quick goodbye visit from Giorgio, who brought us a lovely "sack lunch" (including ceramic plates, wine glasses, cutlery and a bottle of wine all wrapped in a dish towel) for the road, we set off. With Dave behind the wheel and Sandy in the navigator seat, armed with her secret weapon, the portable GPS (aka "Lex" for its continual mispronunciation of the name of our home base city), I was relegated back the back seat with no responsibilities, which suited me just fine!
At our first stop in Martina Franca we found a farmer's market taking place right outside the old town. We took advantage and bought some fresh peaches to accompany our lunch, then set about exploring the charming, tiny streets, with incredible Baroque details at every turn. We returned to the "newer" part of town to eat our lunch in a lovely park, then headed onwards to Cisternino. During this part of the drive, the road wound through acres of incredible olive trees, ancient trunks
gnarled and twisted, with groves separated by low rock walls built without mortar. We found many picturesque trulli, small round stone structures with conical roofs, a style that is characteristic of the area and dates back to medieval times, but is incorporated into contemporary architecture as well.
Cisternino had another tiny old town to explore, with lots of narrow streets, but was situated overlooking the valley. Then onward to Ostuni, whose old town is a warren of whitewashed buildings and twisting streets/staircases set on top off a hill adjacent to the more "modern" city. Very reminiscent of Greece, which, of course is just across the Adriatic, and which once settled all of southern Italy... A fun experience here was poking into the open doorway of a seemingly deserted back street and discovering an elderly man carving olive wood into cooking utensils in a tiny room/shop. Of course we couldn't resist chatting with him (yes, in Italian) and buying one of his stirring spoons...
The drive back to Lecce seemed daunting when we left Ostuni. Lex was fairly accurate for most of the day (only had to override him once) but we were surprised and grateful to find ourselves
back well before his predicted trip time was up! Hmmm...what does that say about Dave's driving? I'll let the photos tell the rest of the story, but first the GT, BT report:
Sandy: GOOD THING--Getting back to Lecce sooner than we thought we would so we could relax before dinner, and the GPS working well. BAD THING--Too many roundabouts!
Dave: GOOD THING--Driving the country roads and seeing the olive groves, stone walls and trulli. BAD THING--Hazy weather preventing us from seeing the promised dramatic views from Ostuni.
Sharon: GOOD THING--Buying the olive wood spoon from the wood carver in Ostuni. BAD THING--First "special family moment" of the trip when trying to figure out the map/directions in Ostuni.
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