Grand Hotel d'Aragona Bari

... red light district of the neigbourhood and the freizes on the walls. This was pretty interesting..and about all we had time for. We wandered out and had a Granita- orange for Dan and blackberry for me. We walked around the stalls selling touristy stuff, they were pretty desperate for a sale which didn't make you want to buy anything!
Another Granita and a sit down later, we walk to the bus to get back on head off to the Greek ...

The most surprising thing I found before leaving England was that no one even know where Basilicata was! Even friends who thought they knew Italy well weren't aware of Basilicata as its not very well known. On the plane from Stansted, most of the English people we spoke were going on holiday to visit family or friends and most were staying in Puglia, not Basilicata.


If you're planning to visit Basilicata, you will defintely ...

... 15 hour boat ride.

We boarded the ferry and set off. Of course on our grocery run we bought some beer and wine, so we began the drinking on the top deck. After a while we had quite the crew: the Australian couple, the 3 Spokane guys, and then 4 Irish lads. We stayed up late drinking and talking under the stars...it was pretty cool.

Then we went to bed. On this ferry ...

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.

... She gave us all a gift! I got a silver ball necklace, it's really beautiful. Everyone here is just too nice. We leave on Wednesday and i just cannot imagine leaving all of these people. They have become our family. Tomorrow they're having a party in the hotel for a day celebrating Women! that should be interesting... then on saturday they're taking us to go dancing! boy that was a long entry, i hope i remembered everything. pictures soon!! Love you!!!!!! Miss you all sooo much! Manda

... phrasebook that was meant for Italians to speak English, it turned my head inside out trying to look up the things I wanted to say. We got by with a lot of patience and the help of pen and paper for pictures. He lives there year round, but is only really busy in august, lonely life!(the whole thing reminded Lena of psycho, so she refers to him as Norman Bates - it was a little scary being passively held captive up in the restaurant). We woke up to find ourselves surrounded by wild horses ...

... an airplane-type seat or deck passage. The public spaces seemed much nicer than the cabins. Anyway, after surviving a night on a glorified cargo ship, we enjoyed a pleasant day in Italy. The weather was perfect, and there's not a lot to do in Bari (sightseeing-wise), so we spent a lot of our time hanging out in the park. I think Mitch got a nice preview of Italy for when we return someday - we had some great coffee, pizza, and gelato, saw lots of couples seriously ...

... Naples- the home of pizza. Put my bags into luggage storage and made a phone call to mum. In the middle of my long conversation, a man came up to me to talk to me. He offered me a job as a secretary?? Quite strange I thought, I told him I was on holiday and leaving the country. Weird. i couldn't see myself as a secretary ever. After finishing my conversation, I headed out of the station to find a nice ...