Florence to Puglia - and Puglia recommendations!

Puglia is rather distant from Florence. When I was a teen, we were living in Bari but our relatives were in Florence so my father drove the route endless times, and it takes a full day - when google says it is 8 hours driving, you know that 9 or 10 hours are more likely. The question: if you split the trip in half and stop along the way, what is left of your Puglia time?

Part of Puglia’s charm is that it’s one of Italy’s final frontiers. Because it takes so long to reach by land , Puglia cannot be deluged by daytrippers from Rome or the Amalfi Coast. Even the Frecciarosa trains from Rome take 4 hours to reach Puglia’s major city—Bari.

With this in mind, you might want to look at the direct 1.5-hour flights from Pisa into Bari. Rent a car at Bari’s airport. www.AutoEurope.eu has good deals on rentals from the big agencies.
Monopoli makes a good base. I would switch in Lecce for Otranto, however.

Check www.Skyscanner.com for airfares and flight schedules.

Have a great Trip!

I not do this so I have to suggest alternatives first. Have you been to the Tuscan coast? How about the Adriatic coast in Marche (between Pesaro and Ancona)? Either could make a five day trip that would maximize your time.
Florence to Monopoli is a seven hour drive, at least. Breaking it up eats into your time even more. Where you you fly home from?
If you have been to Italy before, you know every region has so much to offer, so make the absolute most of that time you do have and don't spend it traveling! Come back next year for Puglia.

We have both been to Italy a few times, and I just really wanted to see Puglia! We are also going in late April, so it’d be nice to be somewhere a bit warmer.

I will look into the other places recommended but we don’t mind the drive! It’s an adventure to us.

Trenitalia runs a high-speed Frecciarossa service from Firenze to Bari in Puglia that is a scheduled 6-hour trip. Google Maps shows the drive to be 7 hours by autostrada, which should be pretty accurate (you need to add in rest and fuel stops, of course). It's another 40 minutes by car to Polignano al Mare. Doable, it seems to me.

We didn't see Polignano, but we stayed in Lecce and took day trips to Taranto and Gallipoli by train. Beautiful experience.

April will hopefully have some nice days for coastal walks, but it will not be beach weather at all, if that changes anything. (We could not swim on two trips to Puglia in late May.) Monopoli and Otranto are both large enough for an April stay.

I've driven from Otranto back to my house in Tuscany in July 2023 in one shot. Left after 10am and arrived before 8pm.
Drove at 130 km/h (80mph) all the way, and sometimes a bit above (outside of the Speed Tutor segments) wherever I could and stopped only for gas and bio breaks (primarily to fool the Speed Tutor system), was spoon-fed by my wife while I stayed at the wheel. Your husband can do even better if you both wear adult diapers and avoid the bio breaks altogether.

I like Otranto, but you can probably add a second place as a stay. For example Polignano, or Vieste, if interested on the coast, or Alberobello and Locorotondo if interested in pretty towns in the interior, or Lecce or Matera for larger interesting towns.

Thank you for the encouragement! I don’t mind the long drive, and thought it would be fun to stay somewhere halfway.

I looked for a half-way town for you, one where we've stayed and really liked. Take a look at Sant'Agata De' Goti, about 5 hours and fifteen minutes from Florence. Small, interesting town on top of sheer cliffs --- fun to walk around in.

Ms Davis

My family and I find ourselves more comfortable in cars. Various autostrada routes are available. Midway towns down the spine of Italy are the likes of Sulmona, Avezzano, Foglia, which are the standard tourist style recommendations.

We prefer to look for farm stay types rather than inner city/town locations. Campobasso, Molise is worthy of consideration. So far rarely mentioned in the traditional guides which makes it attractive to me. Check it out on YouTube and perhaps https://lifeinitaly.com/campobasso/

Along the Adriatic Coast towns such as Pescara feature. Not my preference as most renaissance and baroque buildings in these towns were flatten in WW2 and replaced by brutalist modernistic concrete and brick square and rectangular buildings. Perhaps Vasto is the pick of a bad bunch. Depends on what you have been smoking.

To my eyes the beaches on the Ionian Sea on the inside of the heel are plain. (Actually, not an enthusiastic fan of any of the mainland Italian beaches.) If your normal surrounds are rural and sitting under an umbrella with a drink is your vision of beach life, you may have just found it. If, like me, California, Hawaiian, Australian rough and tumble surf beaches put a smile on your face, you may well be disappointed. I was.

I am taking a risk here. https://www.grottapalazzese.it/en/home/ is the masterpiece of Puglia dinning. Caveat. One must be comfortable and be able to resist gawking should internationally renowned barrister, and beautiful woman, Amal Alamuddin and her date show up, or perhaps King Federick of Denmark and his date, originally from Taroona Tasmania, Queen Mary, wander in. It is that sort of place.

Regards Ron