November 21, 2021: Puglia, Italy

South down the heel we go once again but this time to explore the west coast side. We drove November 21, 2021: Puglia, Italy

 to Gallipoli about 3/4 way down the heel and then to the west coast. Old Gallipoli lies off a bridge or causeway separating the old town with the new. The castle is currently, Covid, closed but the old town is still very much worth a visit, bonus on the far side of the old town is a great beach area - yes, two people were out enjoying the sun beachside. Our original plan did not include the castle, so no disappointment here. We had a beautiful 23 degree day here in Puglia, so no complaints here. We enjoyed the town for a few hours before making our way back. We set the GPS to Porto Cesareo with the timing of catching the sunset, success, bonus we were able to park right on the beach, pretty nice as we enjoyed a little snack. 

I then set the GPS to take us to Taranto, well this should have taken about just over an hour, our little GPS person was having some fun and pushed us to almost 2 hours. Why, well note when using your GPS, sometimes I just want to get to a town, city or site and will put in said destination ignoring the other questions, street name, address number, etc. Well as it turned out Taranto is pretty large with a big lake at its doorstep, little miss GPS was taking us to the far side of this city - not where we wanted to go. I did question her at the hour and a half mark by pulling over and using my “city maps to go” to fine tune my destination, yes, I will be doing this in the future. This doesn’t need to be exact but in our case here, I look for available parking areas close to the sites I want to see and then enter those coordinates - the run around is fine sometimes but not in the pitch dark of night.

Taranto, is a city dates back to 700 bc. It is currently the central economic hub of Puglia and houses the main maritime fleet. There are several attractions along the waterfront including a 15th century Aragon Castle. For us tonight, traffic was crazy, absolutely crazy, this was Sunday and there was some kind of Christmas fair getting going and I guess everyone had to see it, including us, lol. I did set the GPS to an old town parking lot - I’m guessing everyone else did as well, lol, again. We got there and I saw what looked like someone leaving, well I maneuvered myself to get in there and take advantage of this action, when Jan said “you can’t go in that area”. My response was, I think I see a spot, no one is here to stop me, I’m going for it. We parked, nice and close I may add, and only had a short walk to the action. So, yes, this city is certainly getting ready for Christmas with blocks of pedestrian only streets all getting their decorations ready. We had a very nice dinner here as well and returned to the car. We finally deciphered the sign, something about special permission, special authorization to be able to park in there, I said, well we are special. Hey, I saw this as late Sunday night, there was a good chance that no one was out checking, and yes, I was correct, all good. An hour later we were back at home base here by about 11:00 pm. Time to settle down after a long day, this will not be posted until the morning… Some pics of the day, hope you enjoy…