Wednesday, May 23 - Andiammo a Puglia

Our plan was to leave the apartment about 9am and hope to be on the road by 10am - what were we thinking!  I won't bore you with the details, but getting the rental was a disaster and we didn't leave until almost noon.

The drive was easy enough though - all autostrada - and winds through some really beautiful countryside around Benevento east of Napoli.  We tried to get some lunch in one of the hill towns but of course everything was closed.  Thanks to Italian hospitality one of the locals walked us from his mercato to the town center where we found an open bar.  Before we hit Naples we headed to the East coast and then south through Bari.  The land is almost arid, the soil a deep rusty brown - like nutmeg or cinnamon; and it is crowded with olive trees.  The thing that surprised me though is the color of the homes - a lot of them are white.  I guess it's not unlike southwestern U.S. and the adobe homes.

We arrived in Cisternino without much trouble and our hostess Angelita met us in the center and escorted us to the house she grew up in, Casa Cecca.  Not unlike Sansome Cottage it was a lovely blend of the old world charm and good plumbing.








The patio is both open and very private with a smashing outdoor stone shower and a jacuzzi!

The garden out back is filled with an amazing variety of fruit and nut trees - cherries, almonds, plums, peaches, pomegranate and of course olive trees.  The cherries were abundant so we had plenty of fresh fruit.

Angelina's english is quite good as she spent five years in San Francisco studying criminal law.  She is also very funny and very Italian.


The casa is a short, but steep, walk to the centro storico so it's well placed. Cisternino is about 15 minutes from the sea and 40 minutes north of Lecce which we will visit tomorrow.  It's one of many hill towns in the area and seems to thrive without being touristy - how do they do it??

We have dinner just a few steps away at La Giardina and call it a day.