Today we stayed within about a half hour drive from our home base, three towns on the docket Alberobello, Locorotondo and Martina Franca. Alberobello is famously known as the capital of the Trulli, the stone conical buildings with conical roofs. These structures were born out of the need for agricultural needs, for temporary shelters, deposits, stables and over time residential needs. Over the centuries these Trulli expanded to become small villages. In December 1996 Alberobello and their Trulli became a World Heritage Site (UNESCO). We wandered the streets of this amazing special city for about 3 hours, looking at the many shapes and sizes of the Trulli. Yes, they are conical shaped but many have joined two, three, four of them together to really increase their living space. The Trulli of today also serve as shops, bar, cafes, restaurants, BandB’s and even some small hotels. Very happy to have explored this town. The next town of Locorotondo is a hilltop town and one of the prettiest in Puglia. Easily walkable main centre, parking is easy and free. This town has luminous white washed walls and offers great panoramic views all around. The town folk are getting ready for Christmas with creating a walking route all lite up for the season. We were there a bit early to see the display in full colour but did get a great idea to how it would look at night, stunning I’m sure. Before visiting our last village or city we decided to swing by our home base for a rest considering many restaurants do not open until 7:30 and we were only 20 minutes away, so why not. Well make one wrong turn (yes, even with GPS) and you are “recalculating”. This reroute took us further off the beaten track. We got behind a tractor where out of nowhere a vicious dog (Probably 100 lbs) came rushing at the car with its teeth gnashing. We made a quick pass by the tractor just as the beast met my car door, no it did not make contact but looking in my side view mirror this dog was going for it and chased us for about half a block. Okay, we are safe, the GPS person says, “make a left” okay down even a smaller lane street, fine here we go. Well, we get stopped about 200 yards in by a farmer moving his flock of sheep and goats (okay, Shepard?) down this lane about a half a kilometre before he relocated his herd to new field. We indicated that this was no problem for us, like that even mattered. So our quick stop back to home base took almost twice as long to get there, lol. A great days adventure.
At about 7:00 pm we headed the half hour to Martini Franca, the largest of the three towns we visited today. Franca as it is known now was a walled city until 1861 when they needed more access to the city so they took out the 24 towers and the walls to gain this access. The four main Baroque gates still stand as guardians of the old town. We strolled through one of these gates and enjoyed the evening atmosphere before settling in for dinner at one of the popular restaurants. When we left after 10 pm, there were about a dozen people waiting outside to get in this eatery. Did I mention that dinner was once again delicious and very reasonable. Looking forward to tomorrow’s adventure, another longer drive to Gallipoli on the east side of the heel… a few pics of our day, hope you enjoy…
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