As some of you may know I and my friend Mary and my dog Jake are on a 4 month sojourn of Europe. We have now been gone for more than two months and are now in the far south of Italy. On our way here we have already passed through and spent time in Florence and Rome, Naples and now the little seaside hamlet of Marina di Novaglie.
If you look at a map of Italy we are almost (6km) from the very tip of the “heel” of the “boot” that is Italy. This is known as the Salento and is part of Puglia.
We have stayed in AirBnb’s now a total of 4 times in Italy up to this point. This is our 5th and arguably the best. We rented a small 2 bedroom house on a hill overlooking the Adriatic and the small village of Novaglie and it has proved better in every way than I expected. When we arrived we found it stocked with breakfast foods, bread and Jam, water, soft drinks, juice, a bottle of wine and a six pack of beer and a bowl of fresh fruit. It has a large kitchen, living room and two bedrooms with a truly big and wonderful bathroom. A table and big umbrella and ping pong table and a built in BBQ is on the terrace and down below is a laundry room with a washer. All of this for $974 for one month (28 days) so about $35/day. The house is very nice and very comfortable. I would highly recommend a stay here.
The Terrace of the house is about 40 feet across and 25 ft deep and faces out to a sweeping unobstructed view of the Adriatic. The hill and cliffs fall away from the house steeply and end at Novaglie which has a couple of very good restaurants which are on the water and a little beach bar.
Well we needed to stock the refrigerator and to get a few things to make our stay easier and the day after we arrived we ventured into the next town up in the hills for supplies. My rudimentary Italian was put to the test as I wanted to buy some rope, a bit of fence and groceries. Stops at the Hardware store, the grocery store, the phone store and a fresh fish market all resulted in everything we needed and some really good and friendly interactions with the locals.
My habit when in another country where I don’t really speak the language is to learn first the phrase. “I am sorry but I don’t speak (insert Language)” and then continue to try and speak it and do whatever I can in that language. This is universally met with good humor and appreciation. And it seems to make them eager to help me out.
So just for some of you that may be coming this way...
At the Fish market we got 1 Kilo of fresh Mussels for 2 Euros...yes I wrote that correctly 2 Euros. Or about $2.50 for 2.2lbs of fresh seafood. Food is pretty reasonable in the markets we have found generally all over Italy and we got a huge basket of groceries that included wine and beer, fruit, vegetables, drinks, meat and other stuff for 49 Euros. Lunch of two big salads with Tuna, capers, olives, lettuce, arugula and sliced apple, a cool crisp Rose wine, bread and mineral water in a restaurant right over the water was about 38 Euro for two people.
There are some very good local wines made here in the Salento and a host of local produce that can be had very cheaply. We buy huge lemons by the kilos to make fresh lemonade, plums, apricots, grapes, and cherries are in season now and inexpensive. A kilo of cherries is 2 euros. That’s 2.2Lbs for the metric shy.
This is a pretty part of Italy the hills are covered in Olive trees and a light colored stone and they run down to an impossibly blue Adriatic sea with a jagged, rocky coastline and crystalline aqua colored water.
If you have a bit more time than the average traveler or you have been to Italy before and are looking for someplace new give Puglia and especially the Salento a try. RS completely ignores this part of Italy in his “Italy” book as he does Sicily and Sardinia (I realize this is a demographic and Travel Book focus issue) but I think some of the traveling American public is ahead of him on this.