We started out our recent Italian vacation with a week in Puglia (May 13th to May 21st). We stayed in a very little town of Trito which is about five minutes by car from Locorotondo and this town turned out to be our favorite of all the towns we visited. It has free and very easy parking right on the edge of town. Like many towns in the area the streets are actually a maze of circular narrow roads lined with white washed old houses adorned with colorful flowers. In Trito we stayed in a trulli at Casa e Cucina d'Puglia Truddhi. Carole and Mino have lovingly restored and enlarged his family trulli's and made this a very special place to stay at. The trulli was very comfortable and the surrrounding grounds were beautiful. The weather was cool and windy so we did not use the pool but wallking through the viineyards between the stone walls and poppies is a memory. Carole and Mino are wonderful hosts and make you feel so welcomed and go out of their way to make your stay special. Both are fluent in English which is a rarity in this area of Italy. Mino also runs a cooking school on the premises. On the day we went to Matera to see the sassi we met up with Nadia Garlatti for a guide. Truely, having Nadia walk us through the sassi and hearing about this town and its history is the only way to go. ([email protected])
Near Ostuni you will see amazing 1,000 year old olive trees with trunks twisted and curved into magical shapes. Three p;laces we really enjoyed eating at were La Taverna Duca in Locorotondo where Antonella will serve you a true Pulian meal......La Locanda Don Antonio in Alberobello ( 2 antipasti, 2 secondi and one contorni plus water and a bottle of wine all for 41.50E) and for local Adriatic seafood be sure to find near Torre Canne "Riccio" a beach fish shack where I had grilled octopus that melted in your mouth.
Puglia is lovely but one week is not sufficient to see much of the area. The roads are very narrow and getting from one town to another takes much longer that one would expect. My advise would be to stay shorter periods of time in three separate areas.....north, central in the valley of the trulli and then a place further south near Lecce.
We loved visitng the Castel de Monte and the Murge on our way to Umbria our next stop.

Thanks for the short report and glad you enjoyed Puglia. I agree that there is much to see there and you need time. We spent 9 days in that region some years ago and indeed divided our time into three areas, north, middle and south.

hi dedec,

thanks for sharing your report! it's not easy to find info on puglia.

it's interesting you did matera as a day trip. i definitely want to visit there and will make note of your guide! do your remember how long it took for you to drive there?

also wondering where you would recommend staying in the north?

thanks!
dina

Dina: ViaMichelin says 2 hours 19 minutes on their "recommended route" from Lecce to Matera. From Matera to Ostuni is 1 hour 56 minutes. I was tempted to fit in Matera but I think it will be too much driving for a day trip. For us, anyway. I think someone else here did Matera as a day trip, though.

I might hope, someday, to include it on a return trip to Puglia, or even work out a plan that would include the Paestum area/Materea/Matera, and maybe Benevento.

If you can filter out all the disgusting commercialism in San Giovanni Rotundo, the town of Padre Pio's life's work, you will find it extremely interesting. It's a nice town in a nice area, but the hawkish, and nauseating hucksters can turn it into a circus. Just try to ignore all that bad stuff and take in the real story of Padre Pio. If you go for that kind of stuff, you'll enjoy it.