cultures

I will be travelling with a tour for two weeks in late September, to Tuscany and then Amalfi Coast. While the tour returns to the USA, I'm staying for another week. From Sorrento I'd like to travel/ train ( no car) to Alberobello for a few days and am looking for suggestions for another location -- beautiful / interesting/ a gem like Alberobello in Puglia ( any or all ), before heading to Rome for a few days and to the airport from there. I'm an older person and prefer to remain in one location for a few days; as well, to get the feel of the town / village..

Clothing--will I need Fall clothes or squeeze out the Summer in lighter, taking up less space?
Accomodations: I'm about to start the search and will be looking for B&Bs. Any inexpensive recommendations?

What's the best way to get from Sorrento to Alberobello? Puglia to Rome ( train from ??)
All comments greatly appreciated.

I'm new at ' forums' and hope I find the right pages again

yestravel

Welcome to Fodor's. There have been many trip reports on Puglia. If you click on my name and scroll down to the bottom, you will see my Trip Reports. Also you might do a search for more TRs and other information. Go to the search box at the top and click on Advanced Search.

We were in Puglia last year from mid September into the first week of October. By and large we had warm weather, sometimes hot, but never cool at all.

We had a car so I am not familiar with what you can reach without one, perhaps others can help you with that.

It's a wonderful area and we loved our time there.

bilboburgler

Train, Lecce. Temperature still will be warm. Lots of B&B in Lecce.

ekscrunchy

I would choose a base other than Alberobello. Not far from there, possibilties would include Cisternino, Martina, Locorotondo, Ceglie, Ostuni, etc.

kja

You might want to consider Lecce as one of your bases. I enjoyed a few hours in Alberobello, but was glad I had opted against staying there -- it was a bit too tourist-y for me. But that was some years ago, so things could have changed, and in any case, your interests are probably not identical to mine. I don't think you would go wrong by staying there.

To find your own page again, look at the upper right corner of the Fodor's page -- you should see "Welcome cultures" -- that's you. Click on it.

For hotels and B&Bs, you can learn a lot from trip advisor.com and booking.com -- don't believe everything you read, but you can glean some helpful info nonetheless.

You can get a lot of info from Fodor's, but I would still strongly encourage you to get a good guidebook or two -- visit your local library, bookstore, amazon.com, or other source. You'll likely learn things you never even knew to ask! And some -- like the Rough Guide and Lonely Planet -- are generally very good about outlining your travel options.

Enjoy!

cultures

Thanks for your responses. I'm thinking of dropping the Puglia travel. I'm not getting enthusiastic feedback ; the transportation is just too cumbersome--numbers of trains, hours of travel and accessability to accomodations. I think it to be an area where you either need a car or have lots of time/ desire to hop from village to village. And getting from there back to Tuscany, is similar. It's been a learning experience though.

kja

Its obviously your choice, but FWIW, I enjoyed my time in Puglia and I did not have a car when I was there. I didn't find the travel all that cumbersome and was generally pleased with my accommodations. I didn't explore very widely, though -- I spent 4 days total and visited Trani, Alberobello, Lecce, and Polignano a Mare. (And another day in Matera, just outside Puglia.)