Country Roads of Puglia & Neopolitan Riviera

The following day after completing our Road to Rome tour we met our new tour director and fellow travellers and we set off on our coach for Puglia.  I was very excited.  This was the tour I had waited two years to do.  We had booked a tour 2 years earlier and unfortunately the tour was cancelled as they didnt have enough bookings to run the tour.

This time I chose a guaranteed departure to ensure we didnt miss out.

Our destination was  Alberobello, Puglia's picture-postcard town famous for its conical-roofed houses - trulli!

These curious conical-roofed whitewashed structures, clustered in pockets of Puglia are an icon of the region. In fact, this peaceful part of southern Italy is the only place they have ever existed. 

In the words of Unesco, which declared Alberobello a World Heritage site in 1996, the easily recognisable trulli (the singular form is trullo) are:

“remarkable examples of drywall (mortarless) construction, a prehistoric building technique still in use in this region. The trulli are made of roughly worked limestone boulders collected from neighbouring fields. Characteristically, they feature pyramidal, domed or conical roofs built up of corbelled limestone slabs.”

Once you arrive in the town’s centre head to the Rione Monti quarter within the 'trulli zone'. Up a slight hill, it contains over 1,000 trulli and almost no other type of building style. It is touristy, with gift shops on every other door way, but it is also very very pretty.  The best plan is to have no plan here, and simply meander and wander to your heart’s content, finding the odd quiet street or ridiculously photogenic nook off the main thoroughfare. 

The Rione Aia Piccola district just across the road has 500 or so trulli and is less commercialised. It was here where we enjoyed our time most, catching a glimpse of locals who still call these gnome-sized buildings home and elderly groups of Italian men out for a stroll in the streets they've called home long before the tourists arrived.  It also affords you the best views over the clustered trulli patches of Alberobello. 

Road to Rome - Rome

Here some photos of one of my favourite cities in the world, Roma.

Road to Rome - Vatican City

A very early start this morning at 7.30am we headed off to visit the Vatican.  We arrived there and even at about 8am there were huge crowds.  We had VIP access but we still had to go through the security and then we were taken through several rooms and then we went through a door and  up the Bramante Staircase which is exclusive to Insight.  So we were the only group. So nice to be away from the crowds.  The staircase is not a staircase it is a ramp all the way to the top and from there are beautiful views all over the city of Rome.

We descended the Bramante staircase and made our way to the Sistene chapel which was very crowded and noisy.  The guards did try and make everyone silent which worked for a few minutes.

After the chapel we walked around to St Peter’s Bascilica and spent some time in there.  Our guide pointed out some things of interest and then we were given free time to visit the shop for souvenirs and buy some lunch.  She also told us that the priests could bless your souvenir and then send it to your hotel free of charge if that was something you wanted to do.

Road to Rome - Rome at last

We arrived in Rome very late in the afternoon after visiting Orvietto.  After checking into the hotel which is in a great location and our room had views of the Forum.

We went for a walking tour of the piazzas and fountains of Rome including the Trevi Fountain.  There were so many people there.  We decided not to try and toss a coin in the fountain but come back another day when it's not so busy.

The result of 3000 years of ad hoc urban development, Rome's cityscape is an exhilarating spectacle. Ancient icons such as the Colosseum, Roman Forum and Pantheon recall the city’s golden age as caput mundi (capital of the world), while its many monumental basilicas testify to its historical role as seat of the Catholic Church.  St Peter’s Basilica is the Vatican’s epic showpiece church, a towering masterpiece of Renaissance architecture. 

It is no longer the biggest church in the world.  There is a bigger church in Africa.

Elsewhere, ornate piazzas and showy fountains add a baroque flourish to the city's captivating streets.

Road to Rome - Orvietto

This morning we visited the beautiful medieval hilltop town of  Orvietto.  When we arrived we had to park the coach in a parking bay as there are no cars in Orvietto and then take a funicular ride up to the town and when we got off that we had to take a very small crowded local bus the rest of the way up the hill to the town.

We had a walk around town and a look at the magnificent Cathedral and then we walked to our restaurant where we were having a cooking demonstration.  The restaurant is called Zeppelin as the owner is a big fan of the band Led Zeppelin.

We arrived at the restaurant and we were shown to our tables and were given our first course which was some antipasto.  The chef/ owner came out and began to make the pasta.  11 eggs were added to the flour.  He said this would make pasta for eight people.  He made the pasta and kneaded and kneaded the dough.  Of course that needed to double in size over time so his staff  bought him some dough that had been proved and he began to roll that out and he rolled and rolled for a long time making the pasta bigger and bigger.  He used a giant rolling pin.  It looked like really hard work.  

Meantime we demolished the anti pasta and then we had two kinds of pizza one with a tomato sauce and one plain one with caraway seeds and that was very nice.  

Eventually the pasta was ready and he demonstrated cutting it which of course he did expertly and then he called for volunteers.   Three people got up and had a turn at cutting the pasta.  They each got given a bottle of wine for their efforts.  After that the pasta was cooked and served to us with a tomato sauce and then we were given some biscotti to have with our coffee.  We were all very full after that but it was a fun afternoon.

Road to Rome - San Gimignano

In the afternoon we by coach to the beautiful town of San Gimignano, an Italian hill town in Tuscany, southwest of Florence. Encircled by 13th-century walls, its old town centers on Piazza della Cisterna, a triangular square lined with medieval houses. It has a skyline of medieval towers, including the stone Torre Grossa. The Duomo di San Gimignano is a 12th-century church with frescoes by Ghirlandaio in its Santa Fina Chapel.

It is a beautiful and we walked through the town to the top of the hill and then climbed up some steep steps and were rewarded at the end of the steep walk with a beautiful view of the surrounding  countryside.

On the way back down the hill we stopped in wine bar that Philip our guide recommended and we had a glass of wine which was served with bread and olive oil sprinkled liberally with salt and it went perfectly with the wine.

After that we went to the Gelato ice cream shop.  Gelataria Dondoli,   Philip had given us all a voucher for a gelato in this shop which has won the Best Gelato in the World competition several years in a row.  The queues were long but we got served quickly and yes, it was the best gelato I have ever tasted.

The bus then took us straight to our restaurant for dinner.  It belonged to the same people who own Machiavelli’s house where we tasted wine the day before.

When we arrived there we had an aperitive in the garden which was a blue coloured prosecco and then they took us to some outdoor tables that were all set up for us in the garden.  There was some musical entertainment with a couple of guitar players and a singer.  It was all good fun.  We started our meal with antipasto followed by meat and vegies and they bought the meat out on a great big tray and set fire to it.  We had a lot of fabulous food, wine and entertainment.  A really fun evening.  On the way home Enrico our fabulous coach drive drove us around and showed us the sights by night before returning us to the hotel.