Hotel Cala Corvino 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 ...

... about his personal reading experience and embed that into his reviews, rather than dismissing it as distractions.

Here the rub: this is the one book Hornby book I actively disliked (although did find A Long Way Down and Slam disappointing). But I reckon it was the overly self-consciously meta recurrent gag about the eponymous fictional periodical that soured me on the book and that the innovative ...

... 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 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 ...

... are only a small number of sleeping cabins that have to be booked way in advance and cost a lot of money. So like a lot of other people our ticket was "deck space". Meaning we could find a piece of floor somewhere and sleep. It turned out to be a pretty uncomfortable nights rest tossing and turning with about 200 other people all crammed into every nook and cranny of the boat.

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.

... Much smaller though. When we got off the train we took a cab to the Hotel we were staying at, which was called La Arch Nuoava. Apparently, this means something religious because there were crosses and religious figures all over the hotel, there was even a room with an alter. The hotel was really nice, and you could tell all the furniture was from IKEA, which they had there! The weather was absolutely GORGEOUS. Which made me so glad i wasn't home, because you were in a snowstorm ...

So it was an early morning to catch our 8am train to Rome. The train was alright, full load though so we didn't get to spread out like we had hoped. It was an 4 hour ride to Rome with an 1 & 1/2 wait in Rome before catching our next train to Bari. We had lunch and picked a few last minute things before the next 4 hour train ride. When we got to Bari there was chaios. We only had an 1 and 1/2 to find and board our farry to Greece so we were rushed but managed ...

... almost made us land sick... hehehhe... ok so Bari... if you havent experienced this place.... i can tell you now there really is no need to rush there.... small port city with not alot to do at all... so we looked at all the shops and then went and slept like true homeless travellers in the park for the middle of the day.... then ...

... though. We went to bed and woke up the next day at noon. Still no bags. Wandered in a haze until 11pm when the bags arrived. No apology, no nothing. Glad to have the bags back. More about Bari and Puglia to come... but we are getting kicked off the computer. shi and gabe Enough about getting here. What is it like... New Bari is a university town and full of young people, particularly young men with very tight jeans that are covered in zippered pockets ...