Grand Hotel Oriente Bari

As it turns out, filling that day wasn't so much of a problem.... we tootled out of town, found a beach, wandered about & looked at the boats; tootled back, found somewhere to eat, had a chat with a few Brits and - hey presto! - before you knew it, time for bed! But the one on board was a bit more of a challenge... all 13 hours of it! BIG ...

... I saw it at Borders the day on my last day in London and knew by page 10 I couldn't not take bring it with me.

Even without the obvious resonance specific to my trip, it's a great read that anyone who's experienced the oh-my-god-I-just-got-pinged-by-someone- I-haven't-thought-of-in-years on Facebook will appreciate. And an easy one, at that - at 200ish pages in large print and with several photos ...

... around 3.30pm, carried our bags accross and up the elevators to the reception. We got our swipe card and not escorted but told to go a floor up to our cabin. The cabin was small and SMELLED SO BAD it was disgusting. As Dave would say, it smelled like ass. Horrid and stinky were were not happy, as you opened the bathroom the smell got worse. There was an inch or 2 of water on the floor and the bin had remenants of being used (ie ...

... the coastal resorts in August - the idea of travelling somewhere quiet and undiscovered was very appealing.
We passed very few cars on the journey to Matera, which was actually rather refreshing having spent last summer trying to get away from the over-crowded tourist resorts.

As the road headed up to the mountains, we passed ancient hilltop towns and villages clinging to rocky limestone plateaus. Often seeming more Greek ...

Woke up at the Hostel early to a catch our train.

Took an hour long train to Napoli. In Napoli we had about 45 minutes till our next train, so we decided to get coffee. Apparently here, you go the the register (before you can look at anything) and order what you want. Then you take it to the counter and they give you what you ordered...crazy. Well after 3 attempts each at a ...

This is where Pietro, an old Italian guy, jumped into Bruce and navigated us to the trulli. He saved us from a traffic jam in the narrow streets of Puglia.

Pete was also called Pietro while in Italy. :-)

Trullo comes from the Greek word, "tholos" – meaning “dome”. See the pictures of the wee houses.

We found the Belvedere pub here too - also the name of our local in Aus – meaning “beautiful view”. It was beautiful.

It's sailing day, my ticket is wrong so I decide to get to the port early. I have to say I am perfecting the art of getting clean, even when I have to sleep in the car, a kettle of water suffices to provide enough hot water to have a basic wash in a secluded corner of the services and a hair wash. Clean clothes make me feel humanish, followed by tea and a warm pastry I'm 100% ready to face whatever vagaries my day navigating Italy has to throw at me. I set off ...

... but it was still beautiful. Woke up really early, it was so hot, I walked Scruff and came back absolutely melting with heat stroke and everything, it was only 7 o'clock. That was a hard day, the only way we were cool was driving, we had to go shopping for supplies but couldn't leave mr in the van. We eventually found a lovely beach park up where we could see the van and everything (think we bit cautious still bout leaving the van to go swimming) the water was great cooling and ...

... morning we ferried out to Corfu, about 36 hours after leaving Montenegro. He says: Yes, I can finally say I've been to Italy. Many people will tell me that an afternoon in Bari doesn't qualify as having been to Italy, but they're just jealous of my good looks. We arrived in Italy on an overnight ferry from the Montenegran town of Bar (that's right, we went from Bar to Bari). The ferry ride was a little disappointing. The cabin, which we had paid a (relatively) large ...

... I caught a bus to the port with a girl I met at the bus stop, she was also going to Dubrovnik. At the port we got our tickets and were told to wait and we waited. The ferry was suppose to leave at midnight. That wasn't going to happen. There were no announcements to say that it was late or to let us know what was going on. If anyone asked the ferry line desk whats going on, they were told to sit and wait.