Puglia, and a touch of Rome
 

My wife and I have been trying to get ourselves to Puglia for a few years, health issues interceding.
Why Puglia? Interesting history, relatively uncrowded, lots of coastline , good simple food, it just appeals to us.
The Puglia portion of the trip began with our Alitalia Comfort Economy flight from Boston to Rome , connecting to Bari. All went well. I wrote a separate report on the Air Travel Forumabout the use of disability assistance in Rome, as I have trouble standing for long periods of time due to a bad knee.

Our first stop was Masseria Montepaulo outside of the town of Conversano. A masseria is a fortified farm house, this one dates from the 17 century. Our plan here was simply to relax for a few days at a beautiful place with a pool and onsite restaurant serving typical Puglian foods. It was lovely, beautiful, comfortable, very little English spoken, but there is one man who does so and also put up with our attempts at Italian.
One can easily walk or bike into town.
http://www.montepaolo.it/en/

I'm hoping to be in Puglia next week, so I await the rest of the report with interest.

are we nearly there yet?

After the first few days we scheduled a week long tour with a small company, Italy with Pleasure. Their groups are small( about 12) and are based in one town, Martina Franca, and are very focused on food and on history.
Despite never having done a tour before, even for a day, we felt it would suit us. One draw had been excellent reviews mentioning the very comfortable Van.
One of the tour leaders picked us up in this van at our masseria, and then we went to Bari airport and a hotel in Bari to pick up the others.
We then went to our first destination, Ostuni a white hilltop fortified village reminiscent of Greece. The director was very accommodating to my difficulty walking at the pace of the group, but my wife who walks perfectly well also felt very rushed as there were lots of interesting sights in this town she wanted to photograph( she's an artist).
After Ostuni we went to our home base, Martina Franca, a lovely boroque town with a charming old center with narrow streets, wonderful churches and a lively pass agitates at night. This tour uses a scattered hotel, meaning that one stays in one OS about 25 apartments within the old town. The accommodations are simple but comfortable and all in
neighborhoods populated by locals.
http://www.villaggioincasesparse.it
Villagi

There is a central reception with helpful staff who speak English( not widely spoken in this town, but everyone we met was helpful).

We were to have met with our group for dinner but the day had run late, and we felt rushed so we eschewed dinner.

In fact that evening we decided to leave the tour. We are spoiled, we don't like others ' pace and we hated the van, which reminded us of sitting in a really bad airplane in coach, although the leaders had booked a van which did afford extra seating.

This was a hard decision for us but we have not doubted it for a moment.

We decided to stay on in Martina Franca for three nights. We explored the old town, sat in lots of cafes, and thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. We had lots of wonderful food, became regulars at a non touristic bar near our apartment, and made arrangements to move earlier than planned to our next agriturismo in the salento, the Southernmost part of Puglia.
Not to be missed restaurant in Martina: Il Chiostro. This restaurant focuses on the cured meats for which Martins is known, and the nine dish(!) antipasto was stellar.

On the third morning we started a somewhat convoluted journey, because it was a modification of a previous plan.
The tour people provided a transfer to Bari airport where we picked up a rental car, a midsize Fiat through europcar. The ride to the airport was lovely and we got to see the ubiquitous conical stone structures called trulli for which the region is known. We decided not to go to the "must see" town of Alberobello, full of trulli, because everyone we encountered told us the town was a tourist nightmare, though beautiful.
We felt we got a good sense of them in the countryside and near our first masseria.

We drove to our next stop, an agriturismo outside the small town of Leverano


http://www.tenutafloramaria.it/it/home/
Luckily they could accommodate us three nights early, though for those nights in a small but very comfortable room.
On the first evening we signed up with trepidation for a typical salento meal
With music and dancing . We feared it might be hokey and inauthentic. It was anything but!
There was a fabulous buffet of sale time foods, mostly vegetable and cheeses prepared in many delicious ways . The group playing the traditional music and performing dances were amazing. The dances reminded us of a cross between Greek , middle eastern and contra dancing. We all danced as the wine and then limoncello flows freely and we had first fruit and then gelato treats for dessert. This all went on for almost four hours and was a fabulous experience.
We were the only North Americans. More than half the guests were Italian, fromMilan and Venice, a Getman couple, and a couple of Brits who now live in Normandy, joined by some of the neighbors.
One of my favorite travel moments ever.
After a sound sleep we awoke to a sumptuous breakfast buffet , cakes, pastries, homemade yogurt and marmalade, cereals, tons of great fruit, very fresh ricotta, sliced meats, fresh juices etc etc etc.

The Flora Maria looks great

Jubilada, I am impressed with your "no tour" decision and how quickly you adjusted your itinerary. Wonderful report.

bilbo, I think it's a really unusual place.
HappyTrvlr, thanks. When we are in accord, we act! Of course, that's how we made the tour decision to start with( but more slowly).

Lovely to see the first part of your TR, jubi - and of course I've been following your food posts on the WFD thread.

I too admire your decision to ditch the tour; we had to do that in NZ, and had it not been for the fact that we were locked into our booking in Taormina at the end of our recent trip to Sicily, I think that we might well have made a similar decision about that.

You are definitely making me think about Puglia for our next trip to Italy, but the thing I want to know most is.....are there many hills. If there are, we aren't going!

You found such gorgeous spots, jubilada! THanks for this TR--looking forward to more. For we older folks, the hills and steps can make a difference.

I'm coming along for the ride. Puglia is on my list now. Thanks for sharing.

annhig, many towns are very hilly, many are not. Lecce is not. Ostuni is.
The salento is not hilly.
We were locked into the tour too. In fact when we decided to quit we thought that we might lose a boatload of money, according to our contract.
We must have good karma though, in that regard.

Glad you are enjoying Puglia jubilada. We loved it and this is bringing back lots of good memories.
I could cheerfully spend a few months each year there.
Food is good there isn't it? Wine too.

raincitygirl, the food has been wonderful, as has the wine though we are easy to please in the latter category and have been happy with house wines, mostly.

I did want to mention that ATM machines are not ubiquitous here and even when you find them they can be empty or not taking US based cards.
In Martina Franca, which has over 50,000 people it took some effort to get cash.

Sounds lovely. One of my fave things about European vacations is the leisurely buffet breakfast.

Sorry you didn't visit Alberobello for it being too touristy. Alberobello has two parts, the awful touristy part and the part where you can get in touch with wonderful people who still live in their trullo and are very proud to show you around.
Personally I found Ostuni extremely touristy, overloaded with souvenir shops. I think it was my least favorite city but that may have to do with the extremely bad weather we had (mid Sept).
I loved Lecce and Gallipoli was pretty authentic. Otherwise not very much to see in the Salento.
I'm in Vieste now. This is the last part of our trip. This afternoon we drove part of the Parco Nazionale del Gargano which is really very nice and a welcome change of olive trees and vineyards that you see all over Puglia. The centro storico of Vieste may well be the most beautiful of all then historical centres I've seen during our three week trip. After the Sassi in Matera, that is!

"We all danced as the wine and then limoncello flows freely"


Video?

Nikki ;)

What happens in Puglia stays in Puglia...

MyriamC, I don't mind having missed Alborobello as we saw lots of Trulli.
I didn't see the parts of Ostuni with shops, so I was happy.
gargagno for another trip for us, we have lots of plans for Salento. Did you like Otranto? I am looking forward to the mosaics in the Cathedral there, as well as all the small seaside towns and the therme at Santa Theresa.
Nikki, we do have video but you will have to wait for it. :)