Valle Dei Trulli Cisternino

My friends and I stayed at this bed and breakfast in Mola just south of Bari. It was the best yet. Large old English style accomodations, we stayed in an apartment with 2 bedrooms and 1 bath, large veranda overlooking the main street. It even had a full kitchen. The breakfast was the best we have experienced. It is worth the trip just for the accomodations. A nice beach area with breath taking views is just 10 minutes south in Polignano.

A must see for those off the tourist path.

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.

... so we may
have forgotten some bits!)

While we had a lecture from our new friends Mauricio and Grazia about how we should watch our pockets in the seaport city of Bari (our next destination) and made it sound like a den of thieves, they should maybe have warned us that the city is so choked with traffic you couldnīt actually get into the city, let alone try and park a campervan. Having been in Italy ...

Today was a site seeing day for the four of us. We hopped the train and headed to a unique little town called Alberobello. This is the only place in Italy that has the cone shaped roofed houses made out of stone. Alberobello is a UNESCO Site and is something not to be missed. Due to train schedule constraints we didn't have much opportunity to spend time there. Only a quick look around, lunch and then headed to Lecce.

On our way to Alberolbello we stopped off in a town called Gioa del Colle that billed itself as the "Home of Mozzarella". Well they weren't wrong! We found a large factory with a small outlet store and stocked up on cheese, cheese and more cheese - from bocconcini to provolone - yummmmm (thinking of you Shirley). We also found a great family-run restaurant for lunch that served an incredible ...

... day, Staying in Patra we headed for Athens and the Acropolis, Apart from the heat, tourists and the Scafolding it was great, Quick tip go on a Sunday its free! Chitty has aquired an oil problem and her consumption need an Occupational Health referal to the OA oil-annonomous ( I know thats wrong!) Help is in hand, I have a sump gasket with me and a landrover dealer up the road, how lucky is that!

We took a long weekend trip to the Trulli region of Alberobello, Ostuni, and Martina Franca on the Adriatic coast in the proverbial "heel of the boot", about a 3-4 hour drive from Naples. Saw olive trees reaching out to the horizon, some were as big as old oak trees. I've heard that some of them can be up to 1,000 years old. It was an amazing sight. The Puglia region (along with neighbor Calabria) is sometimes regarded as one ...

... their wood-burning oven that is attached to their house - Alex has one too. I had a non-cheese pizza, so I can honestly say I had my first pizza in Italy! The past few days have been very relaxed, I have been into the nearest town called San vito dei Normanni which is only a 5 minute drive away - Alex pointed out all the landmarks as such. We've been to a small seaside place - where we had lunch ...

... end of her driving effort and requested that Kate sing to her to keep her awake as Sharm slept (but that's ok because she didn't miss much)! We arrived at the ferry ticketing booth around lunch time with plenty of time to spare before our next overnight ferry, due to leave at 7:30pm. It was a scorcher of a day and we were looking forward to some refreshments. However, during the purchase of our tickets Kel accidentally (in her delirious ...

... our luck, we get on the wrong train and have to switch trains in Ramini. But, this train will only take us to Bari and then we'll have to take another train from there. Ugh! Such a pain! Finally, we got on the right train and made it to Brindisi. We didn't have that much time before the ferry left for Greece though, so we were kind of panicking ...