Twenty-four hours wearing an N-95 mask, but we’re back in Italia! Three hours waiting in ATL, ten on Delta, a driver to Termini, then a few more hours waiting for our Italo train to Bari, and five hours riding it. Short walk to car rental (thank you gemut.com!) and we’re finally on our way - under a full moon, and in pitch dark when we got on the narrow winding roads to our vineyard trulli. I can’t make the math work out exactly, but I know when we finally arrived, we had been on the road for 24 hours!
In many trips over many years we’ve pretty well traversed Italy, but never into the heel of the boot. Usually we’re slower travelers, but this time we were skimming new places and ending with a few days in an old favorite, hoping to see it with few tourists. Puglia and Basilicata may not have the blockbuster sights you seek on your first half dozen trips to Italy, but there are many beautiful and amazing experiences to find here. Rick Steves Italy mentions none, and Lonely Planet offers only a few more. Google and some leads from the Travel Forum were my most productive sources. Andiamo!
Valle d’Itria, Puglia
The area of the hilltop white cities. Narrow roads hemmed in with stacked white stones cleared to create farmland on these rolling hills. So many grape vineyards here! This area may produce more wine than Tuscany. All very green in late October.
Trulli il Castagno near Martina Franca, was our first stop for 3 nights. We stayed in all Sawday’s properties on this trip, and finding this one determined where we started. The Spalutto family has managed this farm for four generations and offers four renovated traditional trulli. They are simple, but immaculate, and ours had tall cones over both the kitchen and the bedroom. The trulli are surrounded by vineyards, and the farm produces both wine and olive oil. There is a large pool in season, and a lovely kitchen garden from which you are welcomed to pick vegetables. The location is within a few miles of some of the best white cities. I can see staying here a week, visiting more of the coastline and just relaxing. Very inexpensive!
Giorgio’s hospitality is friendly and thoughtful. He had maps showing the most popular towns with recommendations for where to park and eat. On some evenings he offers wine or olive oil tastings. Best of all, he organized a traditional Puglian family dinner for his guests one of our nights. We sat at a long table - 2 Germans, 2 Dutch, 2 Americans, 4 Italians, 2 bambini - and enjoyed plates and platters of delicious Puglian specialties, with generous wine pairings, of course. In years of traveling, this was one of my favorite experiences, and forgive me PETA, I ate the rabbit.
https://en.trulliilcastagno.com
https://www.sawdays.co.uk
Favorite white cities we visited in the Valle d’Istria:
Martina Franca
First look at the sparkling white buildings, green parks, and pristine narrow streets of a white city crowning a hilltop. Beautiful piazza in front of their Duomo, which was Baroque but more restrained than many to come.
Alberobello
City of 10K trulli, can be tourist swamped, I read. We went early morning and there were very few visitors on this off-season, post plague day. Tourist shop trulli are all stacked on one hill.Go up the opposite hill, the one with the big church on top, to see the more residential area with higher end shops and leafy parks with dark-suited senior Italian gentlemen.
And try one of their special local breakfast pastries called Tette Delle Monache, if only to hear the waiter say “Here’s your cappuccino and your Tit!”