Puglia in April

I would pick Monopoli over Bari for sure. The oldtown area is bright and charming. Bari does have more shops and restaurants, but we had no trouble finding a place for lunch even in late February. Shops might be closed for a few hours in the middle of the afternoon, but I believe that is true of most of Puglia.

Take a look at this option for lodging in Monopoli:

https://albergodiffusomonopoli.it/en/homepage

We loved Lecce! A lovely city with the best passeggiata we have found in Italy.

Oh thank you very much! Did you guys rent a car, or did you take the train?

We stayed in Lecce last fall and did day trips by train and once by bus. Public transit is ok but a car would be better. Especially with two people, one person drives and the other navigates. A car also would make it more convenient to book things like walking or food tours since their start times might not line up well with public transit.

We found the book "Lonely Planet Puglia & Basilicata" useful in describing Puglia. It's about 15 years old but the towns haven't changed that much (the train times in the book are mostly wrong though). We also looked for blogs with stories from travel in Puglia and watched YouTube videos such as walking tours.

Figure you can visit one town a day. When we were there restaurants were open until around 2pm and then closed until dinner at around 7-8pm. Stores closed by 1pm and didn't reopen until 4-5pm or so. Often churches and museums are closed in the afternoon as well. So for most tourists they get out in the morning and visit, have lunch, then relax in the afternoon (at the coast, at the hotel, etc). After our trip I found out about a cooking school in Lecce you might be interested in: https://awaitingtable.com/

If I was doing your trip I'd choose the 3 nights in Monopoli and 3 nights in Lecce over Bari. Or even 4 nights in Lecce. You don't talk about your other travel plans but there is a direct train to Rome that stops in both towns.

Thank you for your wonderful input. We will actually be in Rome first for a full month on a 'workation.' After Puglia, We are planning to spend a week in Salerno, which we plan to use as a home base for day trips (definitely by public transportation). I would greatly appreciate any recommendations you have for that destination as well. :) Afterward, we will fly to Sicily, where we are signed up for the Best of Sicily tour with Rick Steves.

We did not rent a car. After 3 trips driving around Italy with no traffic or parking tickets, we decided to quit while we are ahead. Also, my husband was 79 last year, and it just didn’t seem like a good idea.

Instead, we signed up for a 10-day Road Scholar tour of Puglia and Matera, and added 5 days on the front end for independent travel along the train line. This was our first-ever tour that wasn’t a small-group (7-10 people guided hiking tour, so we had some reservations about the “big bus” (24 people) tour, but it turned out fine. Our guide Emmanuela was fantastic, and we made some good friends among the other guests.

But a tour like that that won’t work for you. However, only 6 days, as along as you are happy visiting mostly the coastal cities along the main train line, you will have plenty to see and do if you forgo renting a car. Cities linked by the main Trenitalia service include Bari,Monopoli, Cisternino, Ostuni, Brindisi, and Lecce. You can reach Otranto and Gallipoli with the Ferrovia Sud-Est service (although a bus might be faster).

https://www.fseonline.it/s/?language=it

Alberobello, if you must see it, is an hour from Bari by Trulli Link bus, offered by Trenitalia.

But I don’t have any suggestions for reaching Salento, as the only thing I can find by that name, besides the whole “heel” peninsula, is Bagnolo del Salento, midway between Otranto and Gallipoli. Is this what you mean?

Your trip sounds wonderful! What a great adventure. Maybe we should rent a car just for the Puglia region, but we're still debating if that would make things easier for us. Sorry, I misspelled the name—I meant Salerno (Amalfi Coast).